THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 


WHAT'S  WRONG  WITH  THE  WORLD 


WHAT'S  WRONG 
WITH  THE  WORLD 


BY 
GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON 

AUTHOR  OF   "VARIED  TYPES,"  "CHARLES  DICKKKS," 
"TREMENDOUS  TRIFLES."  KTC. 


NEW  YORK 
DQDD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 

1918 


COPYBIGHT,  1910,  BY 

DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANT 
Published,  October,  1910 


H  A/- 


DEDICATION 

To  C.  F.  G.  MASTERMAN,  M.  P. 
MY  DEAR  CHARLES, 

I  originally  called  this  book  "What  is 
Wrong,"  and  it  would  have  satisfied  your  sar- 
donic temper  to  note  the  number  of  social  mis- 
understandings that  arose  from  the  use  of  the 
title.  Many  a  mild  lady  visitor  opened  her 
eyes  when  I  remarked  casually,  "  I  have  been 
doing  *  What  is  Wrong '  all  this  morning." 
And  one  minister  of  religion  moved  quite  sharply 
in  his  chair  when  I  told  him  (as  he  understood 
it)  that  I  had  to  run  upstairs  and  do  what  was 
wrong,  but  should  be  down  again  in  a  minute. 
Exactly  of  what  occult  vice  they  silently  accused 
me  I  cannot  conjecture,  but  I  know  of  what  I 
accuse  myself;  and  that  is,  of  having  written  a 
very  shapeless  and  inadequate  book,  and  one 
quite  unworthy  to  be  dedicated  to  you.  As  far 


DEDICATION 

as  literature  goes,  this  book  is  what  is  wrong, 
and  no  mistake. 

It  may  seem  a  refinement  of  insolence  to 
present  so  wild  a  composition  to  one  who  has 
recorded  two  or  three  of  the  really  impressive 
visions  of  the  moving  millions  of  England. 
You  are  the  only  man  alive  who  can  make  the 
map  of  England  crawl  with  life;  a  most 
creepy  and  enviable  accomplishment.  Why  then 
should  I  trouble  you  with  a  book  which,  even  if 
it  achieves  its  object  (which  is  monstrously  un- 
likely) can  only  be  a  thundering  gallop  of 
theory  ? 

Well,  I  do  it  partly  because  I  think  you  poli- 
ticians are  none  the  worse  for  a  few  inconvenient 
ideals ;  but  more  because  you  will  recognise  the 
many  arguments  we  have  had ;  those  arguments 
which  the  most  wonderful  ladies  in  the  world 
can  never  endure  for  very  long.  And,  perhaps, 
you  will  agree  with  me  that  the  thread  of  com- 
radeship and  conversation  must  be  protected  be- 
cause it  is  so  frivolous.  It  must  be  held  sacred, 
it  must  not  be  snapped,  because  it  is  not  worth 
tying  together  again.  It  is  exactly  because  argu- 


DEDICATION 

ment  is  idle  that  men  (I  mean  males)  must  take 
it  seriously ;  for  when  (we  feel) ,  until  the  crack 
of  doom,  shall  we  have  so  delightful  a  difference 
again?  But  most  of  all  I  offer  it  to  you  be- 
cause there  exists  not  only  comradeship,  but 
a  very  different  thing,  called  friendship;  an 
agreement  under  all  the  arguments  and  a  thread 
which,  please  God,  will  never  break. 
Yours  always, 

G.  1C.  CHESTERTON. 


CONTENTS 

PART    I 
THE  HOMELESSNESS  OF  MAN 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I  THE   MEDICAL  MISTAKE     ....  1 

II  WANTED:   AN   UNPRACTICAL   MAN     .  8 

III  THE    NEW   HYPOCRITE        ....  18 

IV  THE  FEAR  OF  THE  PAST     ....  29 
V  THE    UNFINISHED    TEMPLE     ...  44 

VI  THE  ENEMIES  OF  PROPERTY  .      .      ,  54 

VII  THE    FREE    FAMILY     .....  61 

VIII  THE    WILDNESS    OF    DOMESTICITY     .  69 

IX  HISTORY    OF    HUDGE    AND    GUDGE     .  77 

X  OPPRESSION    BY    OPTIMISM       ...  86 

XI  THE   HOMELESSNESS   OF   JONES     .      .  91 


I  THE    CHARM    OF    JINGOISM  .  .  .  101 

II  WISDOM  AND  THE  WEATHER  .  ,.  ...  108 

III  THE  COMMON  VISION     .,     .  ..,  .  .  119 

IV  THE  INSANE  NECESSITY     M  *.  ...  .,  126 


CONTENTS 
PART   III 

iFEMINISM,    OR    THE    MlSTAKE    ABOUT    WOMAN 
CHAPTER  PAGE 

I  THE   UNMILITARY  SUFFRAGETTE   .      .      141 
II  THE    UNIVERSAL    STICK     .      .      .      .146 

III  THE   EMANCIPATION   OF   DOMESTICITY     157 

IV  THE   ROMANCE  OF   THRIFT     .      .      .      168 
V  THE    COLDNESS   OF    CHLOE     .      .      .      178 

VI  THE   PEDANT  AND   SAVAGE     .      .      .  186 

VII  THE  MODERN  SURRENDER  OF  WOMAN  192 

VIII  THE  BRAND  OF  THE  FLEUR-DE-LIS     .  198 

IX  SINCERITY  AND  THE   GALLOWS     .      .  204 

X  THE   HIGHER  ANARCHY     ....  209 

XI  THE  QUEEN  AND  THE  SUFFRAGETTES  217 

XII  THE   MODERN   SLAVE 220 

PART    IV 

EDUCATION,  OR  THE  MISTAKE  ABOUT  THE    CHILD 

I  THE  CALVINISM  OF  TO-DAY      .      .      .  229 

II  THE  TRIBAL  TERROR     .....  234 

III  THE  TRICKS  OF  ENVIRONMENT     .      .  239 

IV  THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  EDUCATION     .      .  242 
V  AN  EVIL  CRY  247 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

VI  AUTHORITY  THE   UNAVOIDABLE     .      .  252 

VII  THE   HUMILITY  OF  MRS.  GRUNDY     .  260 

VIII  THE   BROKEN   RAINBOW      ....  268 

IX  THE    NEED    FOR    NARROWNESS     .      .  275 

X  THE  CASE  FOR  THE  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS  280 

XI  THE   SCHOOL  FOR  HYPOCRITES      .      .  291 

XII  THE  STALENESS  OF  THE  NEW  SCHOOLS  301 

XIII  THE  OUTLAWED  PARENT     ....  308 

XIV  FOLLY  AND  FEMALE  EDUCATION     .      .  314 

PART   V 

THE  HOME  OF  THE  MAN 

1  THE   EMPIRE    OF   THE    INSECT     .      .  323 
II  THE    FALLACY    OF    THE    UMBRELLA 

STAND 335 

III  THE   DREADFUL   DUTY  OF  GUDGE      .  343 

IV  A    LAST    INSTANCE 348 

V  CONCLUSION 350 

THREE    NOTES 

I  ON    FEMALE    SUFFRAGE       ....  361 

II  ON    CLEANLINESS    IN    EDUCATION     .  364 

III  ON    PEASANT    PROPRIETORSHIP      .      .  366 


WHAT'S  WRONG   WITH  THE  WORLD 


PART   I 
THE  HOMELESSNESS   OF   MAN 


v  rV '     >  A  >  V 

v        V  f'        u      0-   '  VIT 

>*     ^ 


*>      V*       >V       <Sk 

^*** 


THE    MEDICAL    MISTAKE 

A  BOOK  of  modern  social  inquiry  has  a  shape 
that  is  somewhat  sharply  defined.  It  begins  as 
a  rule  with  an  analysis,  with  statistics,  tables 
of  population,  decrease  of  crime  among1  Con- 
Igregationalists,  growth  of  hysteria  among 
policemen,  and  similar  ascertained  facts;  it 
ends  with  a  chapter  that  is  generally  called 
"The  Remedy."  It  is  almost  wholly  due  to 
this  careful,  solid,  and  scientific  method  that 
"The  Remedy"  is  never  found.  For  this 
scheme  of  medical  question  andf  answer  is  a 
blunder;  the  first  great  blunder  of  sociology. 
It  is  always  called  stating  the  disease  before 
we  find  the  cure.  But  it  is  the  whole  definition 
and  dignity  of  man  that  in  social  matters  we 
must  actually  find  the  cure  before  we  find  the 
disease. 

The  fallacy  is  one  of  the  fifty  fallacies  that 
1 


THE     MEDICAL     MISTAKE 

come  from  the  modern  madness  for  biological 
or  bodily  metaphors.  It  is  convenient  to  spealc 
of  the  Social  Organism,  just  as  it  is  convenient 
to  speak  of  the  British  Lion.  But  Britain  is 
no  more  an  organism  than  Britain  is  a  lion. 
The  moment  we  begin  to  give  a  nation  the 
unity  and  simplicity  of  an  animal,  we  begin 
to  think  wildly.  Because  every  man  is  a  biped, 
fifty  men  are  not  a  centipede.  This  has  pro- 
duced, for  instance,  the  gaping  absurdity  of 
perpetually  talking  about  "  young  nations " 
and  "  dying  nations,"  as  if  a  nation  had  a  fixed 
and  physical  span  of  life.  Thus  people  will 
say  that  Spain  has  entered  a  final  senility; 
they  might  as  well  say  that  Spain  is  losing  all 
her  teeth.  Or  people  will  say  that  Canada 
should  soon  produce  a  literature;  which  is  like 
saying  that  Canada  must  soon  grow  a  mustache. 
Nations  consist  of  people;  the  first  generation 
may  be  decrepit,  or  the  ten  thousandth 
may  be  vigorous.  Similar  applications  of  the 
fallacy  are  made  by  those  who  see  in  the  in- 
creasing size  of  national  possessions,  a  simple 
2 


THE     MEDICAL     MISTAKE 

increase  in  wisdom  and  stature,  and  in  favor 
with  God  and  man.  These  people,  indeed,  even 
fall  short  in  subtlety  of  the  parallel  of  a  hu- 
man body.  They  do  not  even  ask  whether  an 
empire  is  growing  taller  in  its  youth,  or1  only 
growing  fatter  in  its  old  age.  But  of  all  the 
instances  of  error  arising  from  this  physical 
fancy,  the  worst  is  that  we  have  before  us :  the 
habit  of  exhaustively  describing  a  social  sick- 
ness, and  then  propounding  a  social  drug. 

Now  we  do  talk  first  about  the  disease  in 
cases  of  bodily  breakdown ;  and  that  for  an 
excellent  reason.  Because,  though  there  may 
be  doubt  about  the  way  in  which  the  body  broke 
down,  there  is  no  doubt  at  all  about  the  shape 
in  which  it  should  be  built  up  again.  No  doc- 
tor proposes  to  produce  a  new  kind  of  man, 
with  a  new  arrangement  of  eyes  or  limbs.  The 
hospital,  by  necessity,  may  send  a  man  home 
with  one  leg  less :  but  it  will  not  (in  a  creative 
rapture)  send  him  home  with  one  leg  extra. 
Medical  science  is  content  with  the  normal 
human  body,  and  only  seeks  to  restore  it. 


THE     MEDICAL     MISTAKE 

But  social  science  is  by  no  means  always 
content  with  the  normal  human  soul;  it  has  all 
sorts  of  fancy  souls  for  sale.  Man  as  a  social 
idealist  will  say  "  I  am  tired  of  being  a  Puritan ; 
I  want  to  be  a  Pagan,"  or  "  Beyond  this  dark 
probation  of  Individualism  I  see  the  shining 
paradise  of  Collectivism."  Now  in  bodily  ills 
there  is  none  of  this  difference  about  the  ulti- 
mate ideal.  The  patient  may  or  may  not  want 
quinine;  but  he  certainly  wants  health.  No 
one  says  "  I  am  tired  of  this  headache ;  I  want 
some  toothache,"  or  "  The  only  thing  for  this 
Russian  influenza  is  a  few  German  measles," 
or  "Through  this  dark  probation  of  catarrh 
I  see  the  shining  paradise  of  rheumatism."  But 
exactly  the  whole  difficulty  in  our  public  prob- 
lems is  that  some  men  are  aiming  at  cures  which 
other  men  would  regard  as  worse  maladies ;  are 
offering  ultimate  conditions  as  states  of  health 
which  others  would  uncompromisingly  call 
states  of  disease.  Mr.  Belloc  once  said  that  he 
would  no  more  part  with  the  idea  of  property 
than  with  his  teeth;  yet  to  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw 


THE     MEDICAL     MISTAKE 

property  is  not  a  tooth,  but  a  toothache. 
Lord  Milner  has  sincerely  attempted  to  intro- 
duce German  efficiency;  and  many  of  us  would 
as  soon  welcome  German  measles.  Dr.  Saleeby 
iwould  honestly  like  to  have  Eugenics;  but  I 
would  rather  have  rheumatics. 

This  is  the  arresting  and  dominant  fact  about 
modern  social  discussion  ;  that  the  quarrel  is  not 
merely  about  the  difficulties,  but  about  the  aim. 
We  agree  about  the  evil ;  it  is  about  the  good 
that  we  should  tear  each  other's  eyes  out.  We 
all  admit  that  a  lazy  aristocracy  is  a  bad 
thing.  We  should  not  by  any  means  all  admit 
than  an  active  aristocracy  would  be  a  good 
thing.  We  all  feel  angry  with  an  irreligious 
priesthood ;  but  some  of  us  would  go  mad  with 
disgust  at  a  really  religious  one.  Everyone  is 
indignant  if  our  army  is  weak,  including  the 
people  who  would  be  even  more  indignant  if  it 
were  strong.  The  social  case  is  exactly  the 
opposite  of  the  medical  case.  We  do  not  dis- 
agree, like  doctors,  about  the  precise  nature  of 
the  illness,  while  agreeing  about  the  nature  of 
5 


THE     MEDICAL     MISTAKE 

health.  On  the  contrary,  we  all  agree  that 
England  is  unhealthy,  but  half  of  us  would  not 
look  at  her  in  what  the  other  half  would  call 
blooming  health.  Public  abuses  are  so  promi- 
nent and  pestilent  that  they  sweep  all  generous 
people  into  a  sort  of  fictitious  unanimity.  We 
forget  that,  while  we  agree  about  the  abuses 
of  things,  we  should  differ  very  much  about  the 
uses  of  them.  Mr.  Cadbury  and  I  would  agree 
about  the  bad  public-house.  It  would  be  pre- 
cisely in  front  of  the  good  public-house  that 
our  painful  personal  fracas  would  occur. 

I  maintain,  therefore,  that  the  common  socio- 
logical method  is  quite  useless :  that  of  first  dis- 
secting abject  poverty  or  cataloguing  prosti- 
tution. We  all  dislike  abject  poverty;  but  it 
might  be  another  business  if  we  began  to  dis- 
cuss independent  and  dignified  poverty.  We 
all  disapprove  of  prostitution ;  but  we  do  not 
all  approve  of  purity.  The  only  way  to  dis- 
cuss the  social  evil  is  to  get  at  once  to  the  social 
ideal.  We  can  all  see  the  national  madness ; 


6 


THE     MEDICAL     MISTAKE 

but  what  is  national  sanity?  I  have  called 
this  book  "What  Is  Wrong  with  the  World?  " 
and  the  upshot  of  the  title  can  be  easily  and 
clearly  stated.  What  is  wrong  is  that  we  do 
pot  ask  what  is  right. 


n 

WANTED,     AN     UNPRACTICAL     MAN 

THERE  is  a  popular  philosophical  joke  intended 
to  typify  the  endless  and  useless  arguments 
of  philosophers ;  I  mean  the  joke  about  which 
came  first,  the  chicken  or  the  egg?  I  am  not 
sure  that  properly  understood,  it  is  so  futile  an 
inquiry  after  all.  I  am  not  concerned  here  to 
enter  on  those  deep  metaphysical  and  theolog- 
ical differences  of  which  the  chicken  and  egg 
debate  is  a  frivolous,  but  a  very  felicitous,  type. 
The  evolutionary  materialists  are  appropri-» 
ately  enough  represented  in  the  vision  of  all 
things  coming  from  an  egg,  a  dim  and  mon- 
strous oval  germ  that  had  laid  itself  by  acci- 
dent. That  other  supernatural  school  of 
thought  (to  which  I  personally  adhere)  would 
be  not  unworthily  typified  in  the  fancy  that 
this  round  world  of  ours  is  but  an  egg  brooded 
upon  by  a  sacred  unbegotten  bird;  the  mystic 
8 


AN     UNPRACTICAL     MAN 

dove  of  the  prophets.  But  it  is  to  much  hum- 
bler functions  that  I  here  call  the  awful  power 
of  such  a  distinction.  Whether  or  no  the  liv- 
ing bird  is  at  the  beginning  of  our  mental  chain, 
it  is  absolutely  necessary  that  it  should  be  at 
the  end  of  our  mental  chain.  The  bird  is  the 
thing  to  be  aimed  at — not  with  a  gun,  but  a 
life-bestowing  wand.  What  is  essential  to  our 
right  thinking  is  this :  that  the  egg  and  the 
bird  must  not  be  thought  of  as  equal  cosmic 
occurrences  recurring  alternatively  forever. 
They  must  not  become  a  mere  egg  and  bird 
pattern,  like  the  egg  and  dart  pattern.  One 
is  a  means  and  the  other  an  end;  they  are  in 
different  mental  worlds.  Leaving  the  compli- 
cations of  the  human  breakfast-table  out  of  ac- 
count, in  an  elemental  sense,  the  egg  only  ex- 
ists to  produce  the  chicken.  But  the  chicken 
does  not  exist  only  in  order  to  produce  another 
egg.  He  may  also  exist  to  amuse  himself,  to 
praise  God,  and  even  to  suggest  ideas  to  a 
French  dramatist.  Being  a  conscious  life,  he  is, 
or  may  be,  valuable  in  himself.  Now  our  modern 
9 


AN     UNPRACTICAL     MAN 

politics  are  full  of  a  noisy  forgetfulness ;  for- 
getfulness  that  the  production  of  this  happy 
and  conscious  life  !s  after  all  the  aim  of  all 
complexities  and  compromises.  We  talk  of 
nothing  but  useful  men  and  working  institu- 
tions ;  that  is,  we  only  think  of  the  chickens  as 
things  that  will  lay  more  eggs.  Instead  of 
seeking  to  breed  our  ideal  bird,  the  eagle  of 
Zeus  or  the  Swan  of  Avon,  or  whatever  we  hap- 
pen to  want,  we  talk  entirely  in  terms  of  the 
process  and  the  embryo.  The  process  itself, 
divorced  from  its  divine  object,  becomes  doubt- 
ful and  even  morbid;  poison  enters  the  embryo 
of  everything ;  and  our  politics  are  rotten  eggs. 
Idealism  is  only  considering  everything  in  its 
practical  essence.  Idealism  only  means  that 
we  should  consider  a  poker  in  reference  to  pok- 
ing before  we  discuss  its  suitability  for  wife- 
beating;  that  we  should  ask  if  an  egg  is  good 
enough  for  practical  poultry-rearing  before 
we  decide  that  the  egg  is  bad  enough  for  prac- 
tical politics.  But  I  know  that  this  primary 
pursuit  of  the  theory  (which  is  but  pursuit  of 
10 


AN     UNPRACTICAL     MAN 

the  aim)  exposes  one  to  the  cheap  charge  of 
fiddling  while  Rome  is  burning.  A  school,  of 
which  Lord  Rosebery  is  representative,  has 
endeavored  to  substitute  for  the  moral  or  social 
ideals  which  have  hitherto  been  the  motives  of 
politics  a  general  coherency  or  completeness 
in  the  social  system  which  has  gained  the  nick- 
name of  "  efficiency."  I  am  not  very  certain 
of  the  secret  doctrine  of  this  sect  in  the  mat- 
ter. But,  as  far  as  I  can  make  out,  "  effi- 
ciency "  means  that  we  ought  to  discover  every- 
thing about  a  machine  except  what  it  is  for. 
There  has  arisen  in  our  time  a  most  singular 
fancy :  the  fancy  that  when  things  go  very 
wrong  we  need  a  practical  man.  It  would  be 
far  truer  to  say,  that  when  things  go  very 
wrong  we  need  an  unpractical  man.  Certainly, 
at  least,  we  need  a  theorist.  A  practical  man 
means  a  man  accustomed  to  mere  daily  prac- 
tice, to  the  way  things  commonly  work.  When 
things  will  not  work,  you  must  have  the  thinker, 
the  man  who  has  some  doctrine  about  why  they 
work  at  all.  It  is  wrong  to  fiddle  while  Rome 
11 


AN     UNPRACTICAL     MAN 

is  burning;  but  it  is  quite  right  to  study  the 
theory  of  hydraulics  while  Rome  is  burning. 

It  is  then  necessary  to  drop  one's  daily  ag- 
nosticism and  attempt  rerum  cognoscere  causas. 
If  your  aeroplane  has  a  slight  indisposition,  a 
handy  man  may  mend  it.  But,  if  it  is  seri- 
ously ill,  it  is  all  the  more  likely  that  some 
absent-minded  old  professor  with  wild  white 
hair  will  have  to  be  dragged  out  of  a  college 
or  a  laboratory  to  analyze  the  evil.  The  more 
complicated  the  smash,  the  whiter-haired  and 
more  absent-minded  will  be  the  theorist  who  is 
needed  to  deal  with  it ;  and  in  some  extreme 
cases,  no  one  but  the  man  (probably  insane) 
who  invented  your  flying-ship  could  possibly 
say  what  was  the  matter  with  it. 

"  Efficiency,"  of  course,  is  futile  for  the  same 
reason  that  strong  men,  will-power  and  the 
superman  are  futile.  That  is,  it  is  futile  be- 
cause it  only  deals  with  actions  after  they 
have  been  performed.  It  has  no  philosophy 
for  incidents  before  they  happen ;  therefore  it 
has  no  power  of  choice.  An  act  can  only  be 


AN     UNPRACTICAL    MAN 

successful  or  unsuccessful  when  it  is  over;  if 
it  is  to  begin,  it  must  be,  in  the  abstract,  right 
or  wrong.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  backing 
a  winner ;  for  he  cannot  be  a  winner  when  he  is 
backed.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  fighting  on 
the  winning  side;  one  fights  to  find  out  which 
is  the  winning  side.  If  any  operation  has  oc- 
curred, that  operation  was  efficient.  If  a  man 
is  murdered,  the  murder  was  efficient.  A  trop- 
ical sun  is  as  efficient  in  making  people  lazy  as 
a  Lancashire  foreman  bully  in  making  them 
energetic.  Maeterlinck  is  as  efficient  in  filling 
a  man  with  strange  spiritual  tremors  as  Messrs. 
Crosse  and  Blackwell  are  in  filling  a  man  with 
jam.  But  it  all  depends  on  what  you  want  to 
be  filled  with.  Lord  Rosebery,  being  a  modem 
skeptic,  probably  prefers  the  spiritual  tremors, 
I,  being -an  orthodox  Christian,  prefer  the  jam. 
But  both  are  efficient  when  they  have  been  ef- 
fected; and  inefficient  until  they  are  effected. 
A  man  who  thinks  much  about  success  must  be 
the  drowsiest  sentimentalist ;  for  he  must  be 
always  looking  back.  If  he  only  likes  victory 
13 


AN    UNPRACTICAL     MAN 

he  must  always  come  late  for  the  battle.  For 
the  man  of  action  there  is  nothing  but  idealism. 
This  definite  ideal  is  a  far  more  urgent  and 
practical  matter  in  our  existing  English  trou- 
ble than  any  immediate  plans  or  proposals. 
For  the  present  chaos  is  due  to  a  sort  of  gen- 
eral oblivion  of  all  that  men  were  originally 
aiming  at.  No  man  demands  what  he  desires ; 
each  man  demands  what  he  fancies  he  can  get. 
Soon  people  forget  what  the  man  really  wanted 
first ;  and  after  a  successful  and  vigorous  polit- 
ical life,  he  forgets  it  himself.  The  whole  is 
an  extravagant  riot  of  second  bests,  a  pande- 
monium of  pis-aller.  Now  this  sort  of  pliabil- 
ity does  not  merely  prevent  any  heroic  con- 
sistency; it  also  prevents  any  really  practical 
compromise.  One  can  only  find  the  middle  dis- 
tance between  two  points  if  the  two  points  will 
stand  still.  We  may  make  an  arrangement  be- 
tween two  litigants  who  cannot  both  get  what 
they  want;  but  not  if  they  will  not  even  tell 
us  what  they  want.  The  keeper  of  a  restau- 
rant would  much  prefer  that  each  customer 
U 


AN     UNPRACTICAL     MAN 

should  give  his  order  smartly,  though  it  were 
for  stewed  ibis  or  boiled  elephant,  rather  than 
that  each  customer  should  sit  holding  his  head 
in  his  hands,  plunged  in  arithmetical  calcula- 
tions about  how  much  food  there  can  be  on  the 
premises.  Most  of  us  have  suffered  from  a 
certain  sort  of  ladies  who,  by  their  perverse  un- 
selfishness, give  more  trouble  than  the  selfish ; 
who  almost  clamor  for  the  unpopular  dish  and 
scramble  for  the  worst  seat.  Most  of  us  have 
known  parties  or  expeditions  full  of  this  seeth- 
ing fuss  of  self-effacement.  From  much 
meaner  motives  than  those  of  such  admirable 
women,  our  practical  politicians  keep  things 
in  the  same  confusion  through  the  same  doubt 
about  their  real  demands.  There  is  nothing 
that  so  much  prevents  a  settlement  as  a  tangle 
of  small  surrenders.  We  are  bewildered  on 
every  side  by  politicians  who  are  in  favor  of 
secular  education,  but  think  it  hopeless  to 
work  for  it;  who  desire  total  prohibition,  but 
are  certain  they  should  not  demand  it ;  who 
regret  compulsory  education,  but  resignedly 
15 


AN     UNPRACTICAL     MAN 

continue  it;  or  who  want  peasant  proprietor- 
ship and  therefore  vote  for  something  else. 
It  is  this  dazed  and  floundering  opportunism 
that  gets  in  the  way  of  everything.  If  our 
statesmen  were  visionaries  something  practical 
might  be  done.  If  we  asked  for  something  in 
the  abstract  we  might  get  something  in  the 
concrete.  As  it  is,  it  is  not  only  impossible 
to  get  what  one  wants,  but  it  is  impossible  to 
get  any  part  of  it,  because  nobody  can  mark  it 
out  plainly  like  a  map.  That  clear  and  even 
hard  quality  that  there  was  in  the  old  bargain- 
ing has  wholly  vanished.  We  forget  that  the 
word  "  compromise "  contains,  among  other 
things,  the  rigid  and  ringing  word  "  promise." 
Moderation  is  not  vague;  it  is  as  definite  as 
perfection.  The  middle  point  is  as  fixed  as 
the  extreme  point. 

If  I  am  made  to  walk  the  plank  by  a  pirate, 
it  is  vain  for  me  to  offer,  as  a  common-sense 
compromise,  to  walk  along  the  plank  for  a 
reasonable  distance.  It  is  exactly  about  the 
reason sble  distance  that  the  pirate  and  I  differ. 
16 


AN  UNPRACTICAL  MAN 
There  is  an  exquisite  mathematical  split  second 
at  which  the  plank  tips  up.  My  common-sense 
ends  just  before  that  instant;  the  pirate's 
common-sense  begins  just  beyond  it.  But  the 
point  itself  is  as  hard  as  any  geometrical  dia- 
gram; as  abstract  as  any  theological  dogma, 


17 


in 

THE    NEW    HYPOCRITE 

BUT  this  new  cloudy  political  cowardice  has 
rendered  useless  the  old  English  compromise. 
People  have  begun  to  be  terrified  of  an  improve- 
ment merely  because  it  is  complete.  They  call 
it  Utopian  and  revolutionary  that  anyone 
should  really  have  his  own  way,  or  anything  be 
really  done,  and  done  with.  Compromise  used 
to  mean  that  half  a  loaf  was  better  than  no 
bread.  Among  modern  statesmen  it  really 
seems  to  mean  that  half  a  loaf  is  better  than 
a  whole  loaf. 

As  an  instance  to  sharpen  the  argument,  I 
take  the  one  case  of  our  everlasting  education 
bills.  We  have  actually  contrived  to  invent  a 
new  kind  of  hypocrite.  The  old  hypocrite, 
Tartuffe  or  Pecksniff,  was  a  man  whose  aims 
were  really  worldly  and  practical,  while  he  pre- 
tended that  they  were  religious.  The  new 
18 


THE    NEW    HYPOCRITE 

hypocrite  is  one  whose  aims  are  really  reli- 
gious, while  he  pretends  that  they  are  wordly 
and  practical.  The  Rev.  Brown,  the  Wes- 
leyan  minister,  sturdily  declares  that  he  cares 
nothing  for  creeds,  but  only  for  education ; 
meanwhile,  in  truth,  the  wildest  Wesleyanism 
is  tearing  his  soul.  The  Rev.  Smith,  of 
the  Church  of  England,  explains  gracefully, 
with  the  Oxford  manner,  that  the  only  question 
for  him  is  the  prosperity  and  efficiency  of  the 
schools ;  while  in  truth  all  the  evil  passions  of  a 
curate  are  roaring  within  him.  It  is  a  fight 
of  creeds  masquerading  as  policies.  I  think 
these  reverend  gentlemen  do  themselves  wrong; 
I  think  they  are  more  pious  than  they  will  ad- 
mit. Theology  is  not  (as  some  suppose)  ex- 
punged as  an  error.  It  is  merely  concealed, 
like  a  sin.  Dr.  Clifford  really  wants  a  theo- 
logical atmosphere  as  much  as  Lord  Halifax; 
only  it  is  a  different  one.  If  Dr.  Clifford 
would  ask  plainly  for  Puritanism  and  Lord 
Halifax  ask  plainly  for  Catholicism,  something 
might  be  done  for  them.  iWe  are  all,  one 


THE    NEW    HYPOCRITE 

hopes,  imaginative  enough  to  recognize  the 
dignity  and  distinctness  of  another  religion, 
like  Islam  or  the  cult  of  Apollo.  I  am  quite 
ready  to  respect  another  man's  faith ;  but  it  is 
too  much  to  ask  that  I  should  respect  his  doubt, 
his  worldly  hesitations  and  fictions,  his  political 
bargain  and  make-believe.  Most  Nonconform- 
ists with  an  instinct  for  English  history  could 
see  something  poetic  and  national  about  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  as  an  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury.  It  is  when  he  does  the  rational 
British  statesman  that  they  very  justifiably 
get  annoyed.  Most  Anglicans  with  an  eye  for 
pluck  and  simplicity  could  admire  Dr.  Clifford 
as  a  Baptist  minister.  It  is  when  he  says  that 
he  is  simply  a  citizen  that  nobody  can  possibly 
believe  him. 

But  indeed  the  case  is  yet  more  curious  than 
this.  The  one  argument  that  used  to  be  urged 
for  our  creedless  vagueness  was  that  at  least 
it  saved  us  from  fanaticism.  But  it  does  not 
even  do  that.  On  the  contrary,  it  creates  and 
renews  fanaticism  with  a  force  quite  peculiar  to 
20 


THE    NEW    HYPOCRITE 

itself.  This  is  at  once  so  strange  and  so  true 
that  I  will  ask  the  reader's  attention  to  it  with 
a  little  more  precision. 

Some  people  do  not  like  the  word  "  dogma." 
Fortunately  they  are  free,  and  there  is  an  alter- 
native for  them.  There  are  two  things,  and 
two  things  only,  for  the  human  mind,  a  dogma 
and  a  prejudice.  The  Middle  Ages  were  a 
rational  epoch,  an  age  of  doctrine.  Our  age 
is,  at  its  best,  a  poetical  epoch,  an  age  of 
prejudice.  A  doctrine  is  a  definite  point;  a 
prejudice  is  a  direction.  That  an  ox  may  be 
eaten,  while  a  man  should  not  be  eaten,  is  a 
doctrine.  That  as  little  as  possible  of  any- 
thing should  be  eaten  is  a  prejudice;  which  is 
also  sometimes  called  an  ideal.  Now  a  direc- 
tion is  always  far  more  fantastic  than  a  plan. 
I  would  rather  have  the  most  archaic  map  of 
the  road  to  Brighton  than  a  general  recom- 
mendation to  turn  to  the  left.  Straight  lines 
that  are  not  parallel  must  meet  at  last ;  but 
curves  may  recoil  forever.  A  pair  of  lovers 
might  walk  along  the  frontier  of  France  and 


THE    NEW    HYPOCRITE 

Germany,  one  on  the  one  side  and  one  on  the 
other,  so  long  as  they  were  not  vaguely  told 
to  keep  away  from  each  other.  And  this  is  a 
strictly  true  parable  of  the  effect  of  our  mod- 
ern vagueness  in  losing  and  separating  men  as 
in  a  mist. 

It  is  not  merely  true  that  a  creed  unites 
men.  Nay,  a  difference  of  creed  unites  men — 
so  long  as  it  is  a  clear  difference.  A  boundary 
unites.  Many  a  magnanimous  Moslem  and  chiv- 
alrous Crusader  must  have  been  nearer  to  each 
other,  because  they  were  both  dogmatists,  than 
any  two  homeless  agnostics  in  a  pew  of  Mr. 
Campbell's  chapel.  "I  say  God  is  One,"  and 
"  I  say  God  is  One  but  also  Three,"  that  is 
the  beginning  of  a  good  quarrelsome,  manly 
friendship.  But  our  age  would  turn  these 
creeds  into  tendencies.  It  would  tell  the  Trin- 
itarian to  follow  multiplicity  as  such  (because 
it  was  his  "  temperament "),  and  he  would  turn 
up  later  with  three  hundred  and  thirty-three 
persons  in  the  Trinity.  Meanwhile,  it  would 
turn  the  Moslem  into  a  Monist:  a  frightful 


THE    NEW    HYPOCRITE 

intellectual  fall.  It  would  force  that  previ- 
ously healthy  person  not  only  to  admit  that 
there  was  one  God,  but  to  admit  that  there 
was  nobody  else.  When  each  had,  for  a  long 
enough  period,  followed  the  gleam  of  his  own 
nose  (like  the  Dong)  they  would  appear  again ; 
the  Christian  a  Polytheist,  and  the  Moslem  a 
Panegoist,  both  quite  mad,  and  far  more  unfit 
to  understand  each  other  than  before. 

It  is  exactly  the  same  with  politics.  Our 
political  vagueness  divides  men,  it  does  not  fuse 
them.  Men  will  walk  along  the  edge  of  a  chasm 
in  clear  weather,  but  they  will  edge  miles  away 
from  it  in  a  fog.  So  a  Tory  can  walk  up  to 
the  very  edge  of  Socialism,  if  he  knows  what  is 
Socialism.  But  if  he  is  told  that  Socialism 
is  a  spirit,  a  sublime  atmosphere,  a  noble,  in- 
definable tendency,  why,  then  he  keeps  out  of 
its  way ;  and  quite  right  too.  One  can  meet 
an  assertion  with  argument ;  but  healthy  big- 
otry is  the  only  way  in  which  one  can  meet  a 
tendency.  I  am  told  that  the  Japanese  method 
of  wrestling  consists  not  of  suddenly  pressing, 
23 


THE    NEW    HYPOCRITE 

but  of  suddenly  giving  way.  This  is  one  of 
my  many  reasons  for  disliking  the  Japanese 
civilization.  To  use  surrender  as  a  weapon  is 
the  very  worst  spirit  of  the  East.  But  cer- 
tainly there  is  no  force  so  hard  to  fight  as  the 
force  which  it  is  easy  to  conquer;  the  force  that 
always  yields  and  then  returns.  Such  is  the 
force  of  a  great  impersonal  prejudice,  such  as 
possesses  the  modern  world  on  so  many  points. 
Against  this  there  is  no  weapon  at  all  except 
a  rigid  and  steely  sanity,  a  resolution  not  to 
listen  to  fads,  and  not  to  be  infected  by 
diseases. 

In  short,  the  rational  human  faith  must  ar- 
mor itself  with  prejudice  in  an  age  of  prej- 
udices, just  as  it  armored  itself  with  logic 
in  an  age  of  logic.  But  the  difference  between 
the  two  mental  methods  is  marked  and  un- 
mistakable. The  essential  of  the  difference  is 
this :  that  prejudices  are  divergent,  whereas 
creeds  are  always  in  collision.  Believers  bump 
into  each  other;  whereas  bigots  keep  out  of 
each  other's  way.  A  creed  is  a  collective  thing, 


THE    NEW    HYPOCRITE 

and  even  its  sins  are  sociable.  A  prejudice  is 
a  private  thing,  and  even  its  tolerance  is  mis- 
anthropic. So  it  is  with  our  existing  divisions. 
They  keep  out  of  each  other's  way;  the  Tory 
paper  and  the  Radical  paper  do  not  answer 
each  other;  they  ignore  each  other.  Genuine 
controversy,  fair  cut  and  thrust  before  a  com- 
mon audience,  has  become  in  our  special  epoch 
very  rare.  For  the  sincere  controversialist  is 
above  all  things  a  good  listener.  The  really 
burning  enthusiast  never  interrupts ;  he  listens 
to  the  enemy's  arguments  as  eagerly  as  a  spy 
would  listen  to  the  enemy's  arrangements. 
But  if  you  attempt  an  actual  argument  with  a 
modern  paper  of  opposite  politics,  you  will  find 
that  no  medium  is  admitted  between  violence 
and  evasion.  You  will  have  no  answer  except 
slanging  or  silence.  A  modern  editor  must 
not  have  that  eager  ear  that  goes  with  the 
honest  tongue.  He  may  be  deaf  and  silent ;  and 
that  is  called  dignity.  Or  he  may  be  deaf  and 
noisy;  and  that  is  called  slashing  journalism. 
In  neither  case  is  there  any  controversy ;  for  the 
25 


THE    NEW    HYPOCRITE 

whole  object  of  modern  party  combatants  is 
to  charge  out  of  earshot. 

The  only  logical  cure  for  all  this  is  the  as- 
sertion of  a  human  ideal.  In  dealing  with  this, 
I  will  try  to  be  as  little  transcendental  as  is 
consistent  with  reason ;  it  is  enough  to  say 
that  unless  we  have  some  doctrine  of  a  divine 
man,  all  abuses  may  be  excused,  since  evolu- 
tion may  turn  them  into  uses.  It  will  be  easy 
for  the  scientific  plutocrat  to  maintain  that 
humanity  will  adapt  itself  to  any  conditions 
which  we  now  consider  evil.  The  old  tyrants 
invoked  the  past;  the  new  tyrants  will  invoke 
the  future.  Evolution  has  produced  the  snail 
and  the  owl;  evolution  can  produce  a  workman 
who  wants  no  more  space  than  a  snail,  and  no 
more  light  than  an  owl.  The  employer  need 
not  mind  sending  a  Kaffir  to  work  underground ; 
he  will  soon  become  an  underground  animal, 
like  a  mole.  He  need  not  mind  sending  a  diver 
to  hold  his  breath  in  the  deep  seas ;  he  will 
soon  be  a  deep-sea  animal.  Men  need  not 
trouble  to  alter  conditions ;  conditions  will  so 


THE    NEW    HYPOCRITE 

soon  alter  men.  The  head  can  be  beaten  small 
enough  to  fit  the  hat.  Do  not  knock  the  fet- 
ters off  the  slave ;  knock  the  slave  until  he  for- 
gets the  fetters.  To  all  this  plausible  modern 
argument  for  oppression,  the  only  adequate  an- 
swer is,  that  there  is  a  permanent  human  ideal 
that  must  not  be  either  confused  or  destroyed. 
The  most  important  man  on  earth  is  the  per- 
fect man  who  is  not  there.  The  Christian  re- 
ligion has  specially  uttered  the  ultimate  sanity 
of  Man,  says  Scripture,  who  shall  judge  the 
incarnate  and  human  truth.  Our  lives  and  laws 
are  not  judged  by  divine  superiority,  but  sim- 
ply by  human  perfection.  It  is  man,  says 
Aristotle,  who  is  the  measure.  It  is  the  Son 
of  Man,  says  Scripture,  who  shall  judge  the 
quick  and  the  dead. 

Doctrine,  therefore,  does  not  cause  dissen- 
sions ;  rather  a  doctrine  alone  can  cure  our  dis- 
sensions. It  is  necessary  to  ask,  however, 
roughly,  what  abstract  and  ideal  shape  in  state 
or  family  would  fulfill  the  human  hunger;  and 
this  apart  from  whether  we  can  completely  ob- 
27 


THE    NEW    HYPOCRITE 

tain  it  or  not.  But  when  we  come  to  ask  what 
is  the  need  of  normal  men,  what  is  the  desire 
of  all  nations,  what  is  the  ideal  house,  or  road, 
or  rule,  or  republic,  or  king,  or  priesthood, 
then  we  are  confronted  with  a  strange  and  ir- 
ritating difficulty  peculiar  to  the  present  time ; 
and  we  must  call  a  temporary  halt  and  ex- 
amine that  obstacle. 


IV 

THE    FEAR    OF    THE    PAST 

THE  last  few  decades  have  been  marked  by  a 
special  cultivation  of  the  romance  of  the  future. 
We  seem  to  have  made  up  our  minds  to  mis- 
understand what  has  happened;  and  we  turn, 
with  a  sort  of  relief,  to  stating  what  will  hap- 
pen— which  is  (apparently)  much  easier.  The 
modern  man  no  longer  preserves  the  memoirs 
of  his  great-grandfather;  but  he  is  engaged 
in  writing  a  detailed  and  authoritative  biog- 
raphy of  his  great-grandson.  Instead  of 
trembling  before  the  specters  of  the  dead,  we 
shudder  abjectly  under  the  shadow  of  the  babe 
unborn.  This  spirit  is  apparent  everywhere, 
even  to  the  creation  of  a  form  of  futurist  ro- 
mance. Sir  Walter  Scott  stands  at  the  dawn 
of  the  nineteenth  century  for  the  novel  of  the 
past;  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  stands  at  the  dawn  of 
the  twentieth  century  for  the  novel  of  the 
29 


THE  FEAR  OF  THE  PAST 

future.  The  old  story,  we  know,  was  supposed 
to  begin:  "Late  on  a  winter's  evening  two 

horsemen   might  have  been   seen ."     The 

new  story  has  to  begin :    "  Late  on  a  winter's 

evening  two  aviators  will  be  seen ."     The 

movement  is  not  without  its  elements  of  charm ; 
there  is  something  spirited,  if  eccentric,  in  the 
sight  of  so  many  people  fighting  over  again 
the  fights  that  have  not  yet  happened;  of 
people  still  glowing  with  the  memory  of  to- 
morrow morning.  A  man  in  advance  of  the 
age  is  a  familiar  phrase  enough.  An  age  in 
advance  of  the  age  is  really  rather  odd. 

But  when  full  allowance  has  been  made  for 
this  harmless  element  of  poetry  and  pretty 
human  perversity  in  the  thing,  I  shall  not  hesi- 
tate to  maintain  here  that  this  cult  of  the 
future  is  not  only  a  weakness  but  a  cowardice 
of  the  age.  It  is  the  peculiar  evil  of  this  epoch 
that  even  its  pugnacity  is  fundamentally  fright- 
ened ;  and  the  Jingo  is  contemptible  not  because 
he  is  impudent,  but  because  he  is  timid.  The 
Feason  why  modern  armaments  do  not  inflame 
30 


THE  FEAR  OF  THE   PAST 

the  imagination  like  the  arms  and  emblazon- 
ments of  the  Crusades  is  a  reason  quite  apart 
from  optical  ugliness  or  beauty.  Some  battle- 
ships are  as  beautiful  as  the  sea;  and  many 
Norman  nosepieces  were  as  ugly  as  Norman 
noses.  The  atmospheric  ugliness  that  sur- 
rounds our  scientific  war  is  an  emanation  from 
that  evil  panic  which  is  at  the  heart  of  it. 
The  charge  of  the  Crusades  was  a  charge;  it 
was  charging  towards  God,  the  wild  consola- 
tion of  the  braver.  The  charge  of  the  modern 
armaments  is  not  a  charge  at  all.  It  is  a  rout, 
a  retreat,  a  flight  from  the  devil,  who  will 
catch  the  hindmost.  It  is  impossible  to  im- 
agine a  mediaeval  knight  talking  of  longer  and 
longer  French  lances,  with  precisely  the  quiv- 
ering employed  about  larger  and  larger  Ger- 
man ships.  The  man  who  called  the  Blue  Water 
School  the  "Blue  Funk  School"  uttered  a 
psychological  truth  which  that  school  itself 
would  scarcely  essentially  deny.  Even  the  two- 
power  standard,  if  it  be  a  necessity,  is  in  a 
sense  a  degrading  necessity.  Nothing  has 


THE  FEAR  OF  THE  PAST 

more  alienated  many  magnanimous  minds  from 
Imperial  enterprises  than  the  fact  that  they 
are  always  exhibited  as  stealthy  or  sudden  de- 
fenses against  a  world  of  cold  rapacity  and 
fear.  The  Boer  War,  for  instance,  was  colored 
not  so  much  by  the  creed  that  we  were  doing 
something  right,  as  by  the  creed  that  Boers 
and  Germans  were  probably  doing  something 
wrong;  driving  us  (as  it  was  said)  to  the  sea. 
Mr.  Chamberlain,  I  think,  said  that  the  war 
was  a  feather  in  his  cap ;  and  so  it  was :  a  white 
feather. 

Now  this  same  primary  panic  that  I  feel  in 
our  rush  towards  patriotic  armaments  I  feel 
also  in  our  rush  towards  future  visions  of  so- 
ciety. The  modern  mind  is  forced  towards  the 
future  by  a  certain  sense  of  fatigue,  not  un- 
mixed with  terror,  with  which  it  regards  the 
past.  It  is  propelled  towards  the  coming  time ; 
it  is,  in  the  exact  words  of  the  popular  phrase, 
knocked  into  the  middle  of  next  week.  And 
the  goad  which  drives  it  on  thus  eagerly  is 
not  an  affectation  for  futurity.  Futurity  does 
32 


THE  FEAR  OF  THE  PAST 

not  exist,  because  it  is  still  future.  Rather  it 
is  a  fear  of  the  past ;  a  fear  not  merely  of  the 
evil  in  the  past,  but  of  the  good  in  the  past 
also.  The  brain  breaks  down  under  the  un- 
bearable virtue  of  mankind.  There  have  been 
so  many  flaming  faiths  that  we  cannot  hold; 
so  many  harsh  heroisms  that  we  cannot  imitate ; 
so  many  great  efforts  of  monumental  building 
or  of  military  glory  which  seem  to  us  at  once 
sublime  and  pathetic.  The  future  is  a  refuge 
from  the  fierce  competition  of  our  forefathers. 
The  older  generation,  not  the  younger,  is 
knocking  at  our  door.  It  is  agreeable  to  es- 
cape, as  Henley  said,  into  the  Street  of  By- 
and-Bye,  where  stands  the  Hostelry  of  Never. 
It  is  pleasant  to  play  with  children,  especially 
unborn  children.  The  future  is  a  blank  wall 
on  which  every  man  can  write  his  own  name  as 
large  as  he  likes;  the  past  I  find  already  cov- 
ered with  illegible  scribbles,  such  as  Plato, 
Isaiah,  Shakespeare,  Michael  Angelo,  Napo- 
leon. I  can  make  the  future  as  narrow  as  my- 
self ;  the  past  is  obliged  to  be  as  broad  and  tup- 
33 


THE  FEAR  OF  THE   PAST 

bulent  as  humanity.  And  the  upshot  of  this 
modern  attitude  is  really  this:  that  men  invent 
new  ideals  because  they  dare  not  attempt  old 
ideals.  They  look  forward  with  enthusiasm,  be- 
cause they  are  afraid  to  look  back. 

Now  in  history  there  is  no  Revolution  that 
is  not  a  Restoration.  Among  the  many  things 
that  leave  me  doubtful  about  the  modern  habit 
of  fixing  eyes  on  the  future,  none  is  stronger 
than  this:  that  all  the  men  in  history  who 
have  really  done  anything  with  the  future  have 
had  their  eyes  fixed  upon  the  past.  I  need  not 
mention  the  Renaissance,  the  very  word  proves 
my  case.  The  originality  of  Michael  Angelo 
and  Shakespeare  began  with  the  digging  up 
of  old  vases  and  manuscripts.  The  mildness 
of  poets  absolutely  arose  out  of  the  mildness 
of  antiquaries.  So  the  great  mediaeval  revival 
was  a  memory  of  the  Roman  Empire.  So  the 
Reformation  looked  back  to  the  Bible  and  Bible 
times.  So  the  modern  Catholic  movement  has 
looked  back  to  patristic  times.  But  that  mod- 
ern movement  which  many  would  count  the  most 
34 


THE  FEAR  OF  THE  PAST 

anarchic  of  all  is  in  this  sense  the  most  con- 
servative of  all.  Never  was  the  past  more 
venerated  by  men  than  it  was  by  the  French 
Revolutionists.  They  invoked  the  little  re~ 
publics  of  antiquity  with  the  complete  confi- 
dence of  one  who  invokes  the  gods.  The  Sans- 
culottes believed  (as  their  name  might  imply) 
in  a  return  to  simplicity.  They  believed  most 
piously  in  a  remote  past;  some  might  call  it 
a  mythical  past.  For  some  strange  reason  man 
must  always  thus  plant  his  fruit  trees  in  a 
.graveyard.  Man  can  only  find  life  among 
the  dead.  Man  is  a  misshappen  monster,  with 
his  feet  set  forward  and  his  face  turned  back. 
He  can  make  the  future  luxuriant  and  gigan- 
tic, so  long  as  he  is  thinking  about  the  past. 
When  he  tries  to  think  about  the  future  itself, 
his  mind  diminishes  to  a  pin  point  with  im- 
becility, which  some  call  Nirvana.  To-morrow 
is  the  Gorgon;  a  man  must  only  see  it  mir- 
rored in  the  shining  shield  of  yesterday.  If  he 
sees  it  directly  he  is  turned  to  stone.  This  has 
been  the  fate  of  all  those  who  have  really  seen 
35 


THE  FEAR  OF  THE   PAST 

fate  and  futurity  as  clear  and  inevitable.  The 
Calvinists,  with  their  perfect  creed  of  predesti- 
nation, were  turned  to  stone.  The  modern  so- 
ciological scientists  (with  their  excruciating1 
Eugenics)  are  turned  to  stone.  The  only  dif- 
ference is  that  the  Puritans  make  dignified,  and 
the  Eugenists  somewhat  amusing,  statues. 

But  there  is  one  feature  in  the  past  which 
more  than  all  the  rest  defies  and  depresses  the 
moderns  and  drives  them  towards  this  feature- 
less future.  I  mean  the  presence  in  the  past  of 
huge  ideals,  unfulfilled  and  sometimes  aban- 
doned. The  sight  of  these  splendid  failures  is 
melancholy  to  a  restless  and  rather  morbid  gen- 
eration ;  and  they  maintain  a  strange  silence 
about  them — sometimes  amounting  to  an  un- 
scrupulous silence.  They  keep  them  entirely  out 
of  their  newspapers  and  almost  entirely  out  of 
their  history  books.  For  example,  they  will 
often  tell  you  (in  their  praises  of  the  coming 
age)  that  we  are  moving  on  towards  a  United 
States  of  Europe.  But  they  carefully  omit  to 
tell  you  that  we  are  moving  away  from  a  United 
26 


THE  FEAR  OF  THE   PAST 

States  of  Europe;  that  such  a  thing  existed 
literally  in  Roman  and  essentially  in  mediaeval 
times.  They  never  admit  that  the  international 
hatreds  (which  they  call  barbaric)  are  really 
very  recent,  the  mere  breakdown  of  the  ideal 
of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire.  Or  again,  they 
will  tell  you  that  there  is  going  to  be  a  social 
revolution,  a  great  rising  of  the  poor  against 
the  rich;  but  they  never  rub  it  in  that  France 
made  that  magnificent  attempt,  unaided,  and 
that  we  and  all  the  world  allowed  it  to  be 
trampled  out  and  forgotten.  I  say  decisively 
that  nothing  is  so  marked  in  modern  writing 
as  the  prediction  of  such  ideals  in  the  future 
combined  with  the  ignoring  of  them  in  the  past. 
Anyone  can  test  this  for  himself.  Read  any 
thirty  or  forty  pages  of  pamphlets  advocating 
peace  in  Europe  and  see  how  many  of  them 
praise  the  old  Popes  or  Emperors  for  keeping 
the  peace  in  Europe.  Read  any  armful  of  es- 
says and  poems  in  praise  of  social  democracy, 
and  see  how  many  of  them  praise  the  old  Jaco- 
bins who  created  democracy  and  died  for  it. 
37 


THE  FEAR  OF  THE  PAST 

These  colossal  ruins  are  to  the  modern  only 
enormous  eyesores.  He  looks  back  along  the 
valley  of  the  past  and  sees  a  perspective  of 
splendid  but  unfinished  cities.  They  are  un- 
finished, not  always  through  enmity  or  acci- 
dent, but  often  through  fickleness,  mental 
fatigue,  and  the  lust  for  alien  philosophies. 
We  have  not  only  left  undone  those  things 
that  we  ought  to  have  done,  but  we  have 
even  left  undone  those  things  that  we  wanted 
to  do. 

It  is  very  currently  suggested  that  the  mod- 
ern man  is  the  heir  of  all  the  ages,  that  he 
has  got  the  good  out  of  these  successive  human 
experiments.  I  know  not  what  to  say  in  an- 
swer to  this,  except  to  ask  the  reader  to  look 
at  the  modern  man,  as  I  have  just  looked  at 
the  modern  man — in  the  looking-glass.  Is  it 
really  true  that  you  and  I  are  two  starry 
towers  built  up  of  all  the  most  towering  visions 
of  the  past?  Have  we  really  fulfilled  all  the 
great  historic  ideals  one  after  the  other,  from 
our  naked  ancestor  who  was  brave  enough  to 
38 


THE  FEAR  OF  THE  PAST 

kill  a  mammoth  with  a  stone  knife,  through 
the  Greek  citizen  and  the  Christian  saint  to 
our  own  grandfather  or  great-grandfather,  who 
may  have  been  sabred  by  the  Manchester  Yeo- 
manry or  shot  in  the  '48?  Are  we  still  strong 
enough  to  spear  mammoths,  but  now  tender 
enough  to  spare  them?  Does  the  cosmos  con- 
tain any  mammoth  that  we  have  either  speared 
or  spared?  When  we  decline  (in  a  marked  man- 
ner) to  fly  the  red  flag  and  fire  across  a  barri- 
cade like  our  grandfathers,  are  we  really  de- 
clining in  deference  to  sociologists — or  to 
soldiers  ?  Have  we  indeed  outstripped  the  war- 
rior and  passed  the  ascetical  saint?  I  fear  we 
only  outstrip  the  warrior  in  the  sense  that  we 
should  probably  run  away  from  him.  And  if 
we  have  passed  the  saint,  I  fear  we  have  passed 
him  without  bowing. 

This  is,  first  and  foremost,  what  I  mean  by 
the  narrowness  of  the  new  ideas,  the  limiting  ef- 
fect of  the  future.  Our  modern  prophetic  ideal- 
ism is  narrow  because  it  has  undergone  a  per- 
sistent process  of  elimination.  We  must  ask  for 
59 


THE  FEAR  OF  THE   PAST 

new  things  because  we  are  not  allowed  to  ask  for 
old  things.  The  whole  position  is  based  on  this 
idea  that  we  have  got  all  the  good  that  can  be 
got  out  of  the  ideas  of  the  past.  But  we  have 
not  got  all  the  good  out  of  them,  perhaps  at 
this  moment  not  any  of  the  good  out  of  them. 
And  the  need  here  is  a  need  of  complete  freedom 
for  restoration  as  well  as  revolution. 

We  often  read  nowadays  of  the  valor  or 
audacity  with  which  some  rebel  attacks  a  hoary 
tyranny  or  an  antiquated  superstition.  There 
is  not  really  any  courage  at  all  in  attacking 
hoary  or  antiquated  things,  any  more  than 
in  offering  to  fight  one's  grandmother.  The 
really  courageous  man  is  he  who  defies  tyran- 
nies young  as  the  morning  and  superstitions 
fresh  as  the  first  flowers.  The  only  true  free- 
thinker is  he  whose  intellect  is  as  much  free 
from  the  future  as  from  the  past.  He  cares  as 
little  for  what  will  be  as  for  what  has  been ;  he 
cares  only  for  what  ought  to  be.  And  for  my 
present  purpose  I  specially  insist  on  this  ab- 
stract independence.  If  I  am  to  discuss  what 
40 


THE  FEAR   OF   THE   PAST 

is  wrong,  one  of  the  first  things  that  are  wrong 
is  this :  the  deep  and  silent  modern  assumption 
that  past  things  have  become  impossible. 
There  is  one  metaphor  of  which  the  moderns 
are  very  fond ;  they  are  always  saying,  "  You 
can't  put  the  clock  back."  The  simple  and  ob- 
vious answer  is  "  You  can."  A  clock,  being  a 
piece  of  human  construction,  can  be  restored 
by  the  human  finger  to  any  figure  or  hour.  In 
the  same  way  society,  being  a  piece  of  human 
construction,  can  be  reconstructed  upon  any 
plan  that  has  ever  existed. 

There  is  another  proverb,  "As  you  have 
made  your  bed,  so  you  must  lie  on  it  " ;  which 
again  is  simply  a  lie.  If  I  have  made  my  bed 
uncomfortable,  please  God  I  will  make  it  again. 
We  could  restore  the  Heptarchy  or  the  stage 
coaches  if  we  chose.  It  might  take  some  time 
to  do,  and  it  might  be  very  inadvisable  to  do 
it ;  but  certainly  it  is  not  impossible  as  bringing 
back  last  Friday  is  impossible.  This  is,  as  I 
say,  the  first  freedom  that  I  claim :  the  freedom 
to  restore.  I  claim  a  right  to  propose  as  a  solu- 
41 


THE»FEAR   OF  THE   PAST 

tion  the  old  patriarchal  system  of  a  Highland 
clan,  if  that  should  seem  to  eliminate  the  larg- 
est number  of  evils.  It  certainly  would  elimi- 
nate some  evils ;  for  instance,  the  unnatural 
sense  of  obeying  cold  and  harsh  strangers,  mere 
bureaucrats  and  policemen.  I  claim  the  right 
to  propose  the  complete  independence  of  the 
small  Greek  or  Italian  towns,  a  sovereign  city 
of  Brixton  or  Brompton,  if  that  seems  the  best 
way  out  of  our  troubles.  It  would  be  a  way 
out  of  some  of  our  troubles ;  we  could  not  have 
in  a  small  state,  for  instance,  those  enormous 
illusions  about  men  or  measures  which  are 
nourished  by  the  great  national  or  international 
newspapers.  You  could  not  persuade  a  city 
state  that  Mr.  Beit  was  an  Englishman,  or  Mr. 
Dillon  a  desperado,  any  more  than  you  could 
persuade  a  Hampshire  village  that  the  village 
drunkard  was  a  teetotaler  or  the  village  idiot 
a  statesman.  Nevertheless,  I  do  not  as  a  fact 
propose  that  the  Browns  and  the  Smiths  should 
be  collected  under  separate  tartans.  Nor  do  I 
even  propose  that  Clapham  should  declare  its 


THE  FEAR  OF  THE  PAST 

independence.  I  merely  declare  my  independ- 
ence. I  merely  claim  my  choice  of  all  the  tools 
in  the  universe ;  and  I  shall  not  admit  that  any 
of  them  are  blunted  merely  because  they  have 
been  used. 


THE     UNFINISHED    TEMPLE 

THE  task  of  modern  idealists  indeed  is  made 
much  too  easy  for  them  by  the  fact  that  they 
are  always  taught  that  if  a  thing  has  been 
defeated  it  has  been  disproved.  Logically,  the 
case  is  quite  clearly  the  other  way.  The  lost 
causes  are  exactly  those  which  might  have  saved 
the  world.  If  a  man  says  that  the  Young  Pre- 
tender would  have  made  England  happy,  it  is 
hard  to  answer  him.  If  anyone  says  that  the 
Georges  made  England  happy,  I  hope  we  all 
know  what  to  answer.  That  which  was  pre- 
vented is  always  impregnable ;  and  the  only 
perfect  King  of  England  was  he  who  was 
smothered.  Exactly  because  Jacobitism  failed 
we  cannot  call  it  a  failure.  Precisely  because 
the  Commune  collapsed  as  a  rebellion  we  cannot 
say  that  it  collapsed  as  a  system.  But  such 
outbursts  were  brief  or  incidental.  Few  people 
44 


THE     UNFINISHED     TEMPLE 

realize  how  many  of  the  largest  efforts,  the 
facts  that  will  fill  history,  were  frustrated  in 
their  full  design  and  come  down  to  us  as  gi- 
gantic cripples.  I  have  only  space  to  allude 
to  the  two  largest  facts  of  modern  history: 
the  Catholic  Church  and  that  modern  growth 
rooted  in  the  French  Revolution. 

When  four  knights  scattered  the  blood  and 
brains  of  St.  Thomas  of  Canterbury,  it  was  not 
only  a  sign  of  anger  but  of  a  sort  of  black  ad- 
miration. They  wished  for  his  blood,  but  they 
wished  even  more  for  his  brains.  Such  a  blow 
will  remain  forever  unintelligible  unless  we 
realize  what  .the  brains  of  St.  Thomas  were 
thinking  about  just  before  they  were  distributed 
over  the  floor.  They  were  thinking  about  the 
great  mediaeval  conception  that  the  church  is 
the  judge  of  the  world.  Becket  objected  to  a 
priest  being  tried  even  by  the  Lord  Chief  Jus- 
tice. And  his  reason  was  simple:  because 
the  Lord  Chief  Justice  was  being  tried  by  the 
priest.  The  judiciary  was  itself  sub-judice. 
The  kings  were  themselves  in  the  dock.  The 
45 


THE     UNFINISHED     TEMPLE 

idea  was  to  create  an  invisible  kingdom,  with- 
out armies  or  prisons,  but  with  complete  free- 
dom to  condemn  publicly  all  the  kingdoms  of 
the  earth.  Whether  such  a  supreme  church 
would  have  cured  society  we  cannot  affirm 
definitely;  because  the  church  never  was  a  su- 
preme church.  We  only  know  that  in  Egland 
at  any  rate  the  princes  conquered  the  saints. 
What  the  world  wanted  we  see  before  us ;  and 
some  of  us  call  it  a  failure.  But  we  cannot  call 
what  the  church  wanted  a  failure,  simply  be- 
cause the  church  failed.  Tracy  struck  a  little 
too  soon.  England  had  not  yet  made  the  great 
Protestant  discovery  that  the  king  can  do  no 
wrong.  The  king  was  whipped  in  the  cathe- 
dral ;  a  performance  which  I  recommend  to  those 
who  regret  the  unpopularity  of  church-going. 
But  the  discovery  was  made ;  and  Henry  VIII. 
scattered  Becket's  bones  as  easily  as  Tracy  had 
scattered  his  brains. 

Of  course,  I  mean  that  Catholicism  was  not 
tried ;  plenty  of  Catholics  were  tried,  and  found 
guilty.     My  point  is  that   the  world   did  not 
46 


THE     UNFINISHED     TEMPLE 

tire  of  the  church's  ideal,  but  of  its  reality. 
Monasteries  were  impugned  not  for  the  chastity 
of  monks,  but  for  the  unchastity  of  monks. 
Christianity  was  unpopular  not  because  of  the 
humility,  but  of  the  arrogance  of  Christians. 
Certainly,  if  the  church  failed  it  was  largely 
through  the  churchmen.  But  at  the  same  time 
hostile  elements  had  certainly  begun  to  end  it 
long  before  it  could  have  done  its  work.  In 
the  nature  of  things  it  needed  a  common  scheme 
of  life  and  thought  in  Europe.  Yet  the  me- 
diaeval system  began  to  be  broken  to  pieces  in- 
tellectually, long  before  it  showed  the  slightest 
hint  of  falling  to  pieces  morally.  The  huge 
early  heresies,  like  the  Albigenses,  had  not  the 
faintest  excuse  in  moral  superiority.  And  it  is 
actually  true  that  the  Reformation  began  to 
tear  Europe  apart  before  the  Catholic  Church 
had  had  time  to  pull  it  together.  The  Prus- 
sians, for  instance,  were  not  converted  to  Chris- 
tianity at  all  until  quite  close  to  the  Reforma- 
tion. The  poor  creatures  hardly  had  time  to  be- 
come Catholics  before  they  were  told  to  become 
47 


THE      UNFINISHED     TEMPLE 

Protestants.  This  explains  a  great  deal  of  their 
subsequent  conduct.  But  I  have  only  taken  this 
as  the  first  and  most  evident  case  of  the  gen- 
eral truth:  that  the  great  ideals  of  the  past 
failed  not  by  being  outlived  (which  must  mean 
over-lived),  but  by  not  being  lived  enough. 
Mankind  has  not  passed  through  the  Middle 
Ages.  Rather  mankind  has  retreated  from  the 
Middle  Ages  in  reaction  and  rout.  The  Chris- 
tian ideal  has  not  been  tried  and  found  wanting. 
It  has  been  found  difficult ;  and  left  untried. 

It  is,  of  course,  the  same  in  the  case  of  the 
French  Revolution.  A  great  part  of  our 
present  perplexity  arises  from  the  fact  that 
the  French  Revolution  has  half  succeeded  and 
half  failed.  In  one  sense,  Valmy  was  the  de- 
cisive battle  of  the  West,  and  in  another  Trafal- 
gar. We  have,  indeed,  destroyed  the  largest 
territorial  tyrannies,  and  created  a  free  peas- 
antry in  almost  all  Christian  countries  except 
England;  of  which  we  shall  say  more  anon. 
But  representative  government,  the  one  uni- 
versal relic,  is  a  very  poor  fragment  of  the 
48 


THE     UNFINISHED     TEMPLE 

full  republican  idea.  The  theory  of  the  French 
Revolution  presupposed  two  things  in  govern- 
ment, things  which  it  achieved  at  the  time,  but 
which  it  has  certainly  not  bequeathed  to  its  imi- 
tators in  England,  Germany,  and  America. 
The  first  of  these  was  the  idea  of  honorable 
poverty ;  that  a  statesman  must  be  something 
of  a  stoic;  the  second  was  the  idea  of  extreme 
publicity.  Many  imaginative  English  writers, 
including  Carlyle,  seem  quite  unable  to  imagine 
how  it  was  that  men  like  Robespierre  and  Marat 
were  ardently  admired.  The  best  answer  is 
that  they  were  admired  for  being  poor — poor 
when  they  might  have  been  rich. 

No  one  will  pretend  that  this  ideal  exists 
at  all  in  the  haute  politique  of  this  country. 
Our  national  claim  to  political  incorruptibility 
is  actually  based  on  exactly  the  opposite  argu- 
ment; it  is  based  on  the  theory  that  wealthy 
men  in  assured  positions  will  have  no  tempta- 
tion to  financial  trickery.  Whether  the  history 
of  the  English  aristocracy,  from  the  spoliation 
of  the  monasteries  to  the  annexation  of  the 
49 


THE     UNFINISHED     TEMPLE 

mines,  entirely  supports  this  theory  I  am  not 
now  inquiring;  but  certainly  it  is  our  theory, 
that  wealth  will  be  a  protection  against  politi- 
cal corruption.  The  English  statesman  is 
bribed  not  to  be  bribed.  He  is  born  with  a 
silver  spoon  in  his  mouth,  so  that  he  may  never 
afterwards  be  found  with  the  silver  spoons  in 
his  pocket.  So  strong  is  our  faith  in  this  pro- 
tection by  plutocracy,  that  we  are  more  and 
more  trusting  our  empire  in  the  hands  of 
families  which  inherit  wealth  without  either 
blood  or  manners.  Some  of  our  political 
houses  are  parvenue  by  pedigree ;  they  hand  on 
vulgarity  like  a  coat-of-arms.  In  the  case  of 
many  a  modern  statesman  to  say  that  he  is 
born  with  a  silver  spoon  in  his  mouth,  is  at 
once  inadequate  and  excessive.  He  is  born  with 
a  silver  knife  in  his  mouth.  But  all  this  only 
illustrates  the  English  theory  that  poverty  is 
perilous  for  a  politician. 

It  will  be  the  same  if  we  compare  the  condi- 
tions that  have  come  about  with  the  Revolu- 
tion    legend    touching     publicity.       The    old 
50 


THE     UNFINISHED     TEMPLE 

democratic  doctrine  was  that  the  more  light 
that  was  let  in  to  all  departments  of  State,  the 
easier  it  was  for  a  righteous  indignation  to 
move  promptly  against  wrong.  In  other 
words,  monarchs  were  to  live  in  glass  houses, 
that  mobs  might  throw  stones.  Again,  no 
admirer  of  existing  English  politics  (if  there 
is  any  admirer  of  existing  English  politics) 
will  really  pretend  that  this  ideal  of  publicity 
is  exhausted,  or  even  attempted.  Obviously 
public  life  grows  more  private  every  day.  The 
French  have,  indeed,  continued  the  tradition 
of  revealing  secrets  and  making  scandals  ;  hence 
they  are  more  flagrant  and  palpable  than  we, 
not  in  sin,  but  in  the  confession  of  sin.  The 
first  trial  of  Dreyfus  might  have  happened  in 
England;  it  is  exactly  the  second  trial  that 
would  have  been  legally  impossible.  But,  in- 
deed, if  we  wish  to  realize  how  far  we  fall  short 
of  the  original  republican  outline,  the  sharpest 
way  to  test  it  is  to  note  how  far  we  fall  short 
even  of  the  republican  element  in  the  older  re- 
gime. Not  only  are  we  less  democratic  than 
51 


THE     UNFINISHED     TEMPLE 

Danton  and  Condorcet,  but  we  are  in  many 
ways  less  democratic  than  Choiseuil  and  Marie 
'Antoinette.  The  richest  nobles  before  the  revolt 
were  needy  middle-class  people  compared  with 
our  Rothschilds  and  Roseberys.  And  in  the 
matter  of  publicity  the  old  French  monarchy 
was  infinitely  more  democratic  than  any  of  the 
monarchies  of  to-day.  Practically  anybody 
who  chose  could  walk  into  the  palace  and  see 
the  king  playing  with  his  children,  or  paring 
his  nails.  The  people  possessed  the  monarch, 
as  the  people  possess  Primrose  Hill;  that  is, 
they  cannot  move  it,  but  they  can  sprawl  all 
over  it.  The  old  French  monarchy  was  founded 
on  the  excellent  principle  that  a  cat  may  look 
at  a  king.  But  nowadays  a  cat  may  not  look 
at  a  king;  unless  it  is  a  very  tame  cat.  Even 
where  the  press  is  free  for  criticism  it  is  only 
used  for  adulation.  The  substantial  difference 
comes  to  something  uncommonly  like  this: 
Eighteenth  century  tyranny  meant  that  you 
could  say  "  The  K —  of  Br rd  is  a  prof- 
ligate." Twentieth  century  liberty  really 
52 


THE     UNFINISHED     TEMPLE 

means  that  you  are  allowed  to  say  "  The  King 
of  Brentford  is  a  model  family  man." 

But  we  have  delayed  the  main  argument 
too  long  for  the  parenthetical  purpose  of  show- 
ing that  the  great  democratic  dream,  like  the 
great  mediaeval  dream,  has  in  a  strict  and  prac- 
tical sense  been  a  dream  unfulfilled.  Whatever 
is  the  matter  with  modern  England  it  is  not 
that  we  have  carried  out  too  literally,  or 
achieved  with  disappointing  completeness, 
either  the  Catholicism  of  Becket  or  the  equality 
of  Marat.  Now  I  have  taken  these  two  cases 
merely  because  they  are  typical  of  ten  thousand 
other  cases;  the  world  is  full  of  these  unful- 
filled ideas,  these  uncompleted  temples.  History 
does  not  consist  of  completed  and  crumbling 
ruins;  rather  it  consists  of  half-built  villas; 
abandoned  by  a  bankrupt-builder.  This  world 
is  more  like  an  unfinished  suburb  than  a  de- 
serted cemetery. 


53 


VI 

THE    ENEMIES    OF    PROPERTY 

BUT  it  is  for  this  especial  reason  that  such  an 
explanation  is  necessary  on  the  very  thresh- 
old of  the  definition  of  ideals.  For  owing  to 
that  historic  fallacy  with  which  I  have  just 
dealt,  numbers  of  readers  will  expect  me,  when 
I  propound  an  ideal,  to  propound  a  new  ideal. 
Now  I  have  no  notion  at  all  of  propounding  a 
new  ideal.  There  is  no  new  ideal  imaginable  by 
the  madness  of  modern  sophists,  which  will  be 
anything  like  so  startling  as  fulfilling  any  one 
of  the  old  ones.  On  the  day  that  any  copybook 
maxim  is  carried  out  there  will  be  something 
like  an  earthquake  on  the  earth.  There  is  only 
one  thing  new  that  can  be  done  under  the  sun ; 
and  that  is  to  look  at  the  sun.  If  you  attempt 
it  on  a  blue  day  in  June,  you  will  know  why 
men  do  not  look  straight  at  their  ideals.  There 
is  only  one  really  startling  thing  to  be  done 


ENEMIES     OF     PROPERTY 

with  the  ideal,  and  that  is  to  do  it.  It  is  to 
face  the  flaming  logical  fact,  and  its  frightful 
consequences.  Christ  knew  that  it  would  be  a 
more  stunning  thunderbolt  to  fulfill  the  law  than 
to  destroy  it.  It  is  true  of  both  the  cases  I 
have  quoted,  and  of  every  case.  The  pagans 
had  always  adored  purity:  Athene,  Artemis, 
Vesta.  It  was  when  the  virgin  martyrs  began 
defiantly  to  practice  purity  that  they  rent  them 
with  wild  beasts,  and  rolled  them  on  red-hot 
coals.  The  world  had  always  loved  the  notion 
of  the  poor  man  uppermost ;  it  can  be  proved 
by  every  legend  from  Cinderella  to  Whitting- 
ton,  by  every  poem  from  the  Magnificat  to  the 
Marseillaise.  The  kings  went  mad  against 
France  not  because  she  idealized  this  ideal,  but 
because  she  realized  it.  Joseph  of  Austria 
and  Catherine  of  Russia  quite  agreed  that 
the  people  should  rule;  what  horrified  them 
was  that  the  people  did.  The  French  Revo- 
lution, therefore,  is  the  type  of  all  true  revo- 
lutions, because  its  ideal  is  as  old  as  the  Old 
Adam,  but  its  fulfillment  almost  as  fresh,  aa 
55 


ENEMIES     OF     PROPERTY 

miraculous,  and  as  new  as  the  New  Jerusa- 
lem. 

But  in  the  modern  world  we  are  primarily 
confronted  with  the  extraordinary  spectacle  of 
people  turning  to  new  ideals  because  they  have 
not  tried  the  old.  Men  have  not  got  tired  of 
Christianity;  they  have  never  found  enough 
Christianity  to  get  tired  of.  Men  have  never 
wearied  of  political  justice;  they  have  wearied 
of  waiting  for  it. 

Now,  for  the  purpose  of  this  book,  I  pro- 
pose to  take  only  one  of  these  old  ideals;  but 
one  that  is  perhaps  the  oldest.  I  take  the  prin- 
ciple of  domesticity:  the  ideal  house;  the 
happy  family,  the  holy  family  of  history.  For 
the  moment  it  is  only  necessary  to  remark  that 
it  is  like  the  church  and  like  the  republic,  now 
chiefly  assailed  by  those  who  have  never  known 
it,  or  by  those  who  have  failed  to  fulfill  it.  Num- 
berless modern  women  have  rebelled  against 
domesticity  in  theory  because  they  have  never 
known  it  in  practice.  Hosts  of  the  poor  are 
driven  to  the  workhouse  without  ever  having 
56 


ENEMIES     OF     PROPERTY 

known  the  house.  Generally  speaking,  the  cul- 
tured class  is  shrieking  to  be  let  out  of  the 
decent  home,  just  as  the  working  class  is  shout- 
ing to  be  let  into  it. 

Now  if  we  take  this  house  or  home  as  a  test, 
we  may  very  generally  lay  the  simple  spiritual 
foundations  or  the  idea.  God  is  that  which 
can  make  something  out  of  nothing.  Man  (it 
may  truly  be  said)  is  that  which  can  make 
something  out  of  anything.  In  other  words, 
while  the  joy  of  God  be  unlimited  creation,  the 
special  joy  of  man  is  limited  creation,  the  com- 
bination of  creation  with  limits.  Man's  pleas- 
ure, therefore,  is  to  possess  conditions,  but  also 
to  be  partly  possessed  by  them;  to  be  half- 
controlled  by  the  flute  he  plays  or  by  the  field 
he  digs.  The  excitement  is  to  get  the  utmost 
out  of  given  conditions ;  the  conditions  will 
stretch,  but  not  indefinitely.  A  man  can  write 
an  immortal  sonnet  on  an  old  envelope,  or  hack 
a  hero  out  of  a  lump  of  rock.  But  hacking  a 
sonnet  out  of  a  rock  would  be  a  laborious  busi- 
ness, and  making  a  hero  out  of  an  envelope  is 
57 


ENEMIES     OF     PROPERTY 

almost  out  of  the  sphere  of  practical  politics. 
This  fruitful  strife  with  limitations,  when  it 
concerns  some  airy  entertainment  of  an  edu- 
cated class,  goes  by  the  name  of  Art.  But  the 
mass  of  men  have  neither  time  nor  aptitude  for 
the  invention  of  invisible  or  abstract  beauty. 
For  the  mass  of  men  the  idea  of  artistic  crea- 
tion can  only  be  expressed  by  an  idea  un- 
popular in  present  discussions — the  idea  of 
property.  The  average  man  cannot  cut  clay 
into  the  shape  of  a  man ;  but  he  can  cut  earth 
into  the  shape  of  a  garden ;  and  though  he  ar- 
ranges it  with  red  geraniums  and  blue  potatoes 
in  alternate  straight  lines,  he  is  still  an  artist ; 
because  he  has  chosen.  The  average  man  can- 
not paint  the  sunset  whose  colors  he  admires ; 
but  he  can  paint  his  own  house  with  what 
color  he  chooses,  and  though  he  paints  it  pea 
green  with  pink  spots,  he  is  still  an  artist ;  be- 
cause that  is  his  choice.  Property  is  merely 
the  art  of  the  democracy.  It  means  that  every 
man  should  have  something  that  he  can  shape 
in  his  own  image,  as  he  is  shaped  in  the  image 
58 


ENEMIES     OF     PROPERTY 

of  heaven.  But  because  he  is  not  God,  but  only 
a  graven  image  of  God,  his  self-expression 
must  deal  with  limits ;  properly  with  limits  that 
are  strict  and  even  small. 

I  am  well  aware  that  the  word  "  property  " 
has  been  defied  in  our  time  by  the  corruption 
of  the  great  capitalists.  One  would  think,  to 
hear  people  talk,  that  the  Rothschilds  and  the 
Rockefellers  were  on  the  side  of  property.  But 
obviously  they  are  the  enemies  of  property ; 
because  they  are  enemies  of  their  own  limita- 
tions. They  do  not  want  their  own  land;  but 
other  people's.  When  they  remove  their  neigh- 
bor's landmark,  they  also  remove  their  own. 
'A  man  who  loves  a  little  triangular  field  ought 
to  love  it  because  it  is  triangular;  anyone  who 
destroys  the  shape,  by  giving  him  more  land, 
is  a  thief  who  has  stolen  a  triangle.  A  man 
with  the  true  poetry  of  possession  wishes  to 
see  the  wall  where  his  garden  meets  Smith's 
garden ;  the  hedge  where  his  farm  touches 
Brown's.  He  cannot  see  the  shape  of  his  own 
land  unless  he  sees  the  edges  of  his  neigh- 
59 


ENEMIES     OF    PROPERTY 

bor's.  It  is  the  negation  of  property  that 
the  Duke  of  Sutherland  should  have  all  the 
farms  in  one  estate;  just  as  it  would  be  the 
negation  of  marriage  if  he  had  all  our  wives  in 
one  harem. 


60 


VII 

THE    FREE    FAMILY 

As  I  have  said,  I  propose  to  take  only  one 
central  instance;  I  will  take  the  institution 
called  the  private  house  or  home ;  the  shell  and 
organ  of  the  family.  We  will  consider  cosmic 
and  political  tendencies  simply  as  they  strike 
that  ancient  and  unique  roof.  Very  few  words 
will  suffice  for  all  I  have  to  say  about  the  family 
itself.  I  leave  alone  the  speculations  about  its 
animal  origin  and  the  details  of  its  social  re- 
construction; I  am  concerned  only  with  its 
palpable  omnipresence.  It  is  a  necessity  for 
mankind;  it  is  (if  you  like  to  put  it  so)  a  trap 
for  mankind.  Only  by  the  hypocritical  ignor- 
ing of  a  huge  fact  can  anyone  contrive  to  talk 
of  "  free  love  " ;  as  if  love  were  an  episode  like 
lighting  a  cigarette,  or  whistling  a  tune.  Sup- 
pose whenever  a  man  lit  a  cigarette,  a  tower- 
ing genie  arose  from  the  rings  of  smoke  and 
61 


THE     FREE     FAMILY 

followed  him  everywhere  as  a  huge  slave.  Sup- 
pose whenever  a  man  whistled  a  tune  he  "  drew 
an  angel  down"  and  had  to  walk  about  for- 
ever with  a  seraph  on  a  string.  These  catas- 
trophic images  are  but  faint  parallels  to  the 
earthquake  consequences  that  Nature  has  at- 
tached to  sex;  and  it  is  perfectly  plain  at  the 
beginning  that  a  man  cannot  be  a  free  lover ; 
he  is  either  a  traitor  or  a  tied  man.  The  sec- 
ond element  that  creates  the  family  is  that  its 
consequences,  though  colossal,  are  gradual ;  the 
cigarette  produces  a  baby  giant,  the  song  only 
an  infant  seraph.  Thence  arises  the  necessity 
for  some  prolonged  system  of  co-operation  ;  and 
thence  arises  the  family  in  its  full  educational 
sense. 

It  may  be  said  that  this  institution  of  the 
home  is  the  one  anarchist  institution.  That  is 
to  say,  it  is  older  than  law,  and  stands  outside 
the  State.  By  its  nature  it  is  refreshed  or  cor- 
rupted by  indefinable  forces  of  custom  or  kin- 
ship. This  is  not  to  be  understood  as  meaning 
that  the  State  has  no  authority  over  families ; 
62 


THE     FREE    FAMILY 

that  State  authority  is  invoked  and  ought  to 
be  invoked  in  many  abnormal  cases.  But  in 
most  normal  cases  of  family  joys  and  sorrows, 
the  State  has  no  mode  of  entry.  It  is  not  so 
much  that  the  law  should  not  interfere,  as  that 
the  law  cannot.  Just  as  there  are  fields  too 
far  off  for  law,  so  there  are  fields  too  near; 
as  a  man  may  see  the  North  Pole  before  he 
sees  his  own  backbone.  Small  and  near  mat- 
ters escape  control  at  least  as  much  as  vast 
and  remote  ones ;  and  the  real  pains  and  pleas- 
ures of  the  family  form  a  strong  instance  of 
this.  If  a  baby  cries  for  the  moon,  the  police- 
man cannot  procure  the  moon — but  neither  can 
he  stop  the  baby.  Creatures  so  close  to  each 
other  as  a  husband  and  wife,  or  a  mother  and 
children,  have  powers  of  making  each  other 
happy  or  miserable  with  which  no  public  co- 
ercion can  deal.  If  a  marriage  could  be  dis- 
solved every  morning  it  would  not  give  back 
his  night's  rest  to  a  man  kept  awake  by  a 
curtain  lecture ;  and  what  is  the  good  of  giving 
a  man  a  lot  of  power  where  he  only  wants  a 
43 


THE     FREE     FAMILY 

little  peace?  The  child  must  depend  on  the 
most  imperfect  mother ;  the  mother  may  be  de- 
voted to  the  most  unworthy  children;  in  such 
relations  legal  revenges  are  vain.  Even  in  the 
abnormal  cases  where  the  law  may  operate,  this 
difficulty  is  constantly  found;  as  many  a  be- 
wildered magistrate  knows.  He  has  to  save 
children  from  starvation  by  taking  away  their 
breadwinner.  And  he  often  has  to  break  a 
wife's  heart  because  her  husband  has  already 
broken  her  head.  The  State  has  no  tool  deli- 
cate enough  to  deracinate  the  rooted  habits 
and  tangled  affections  of  the  family;  the  two 
sexes,  whether  happy  or  unhappy,  are  glued 
together  too  tightly  for  us  to  get  the  blade  of 
a  legal  penknife  in  between  them.  The  man 
and  the  woman  are  one  flesh — yes,  even  when 
they  are  not  one  spirit.  Man  is  a  quadruped. 
Upon  this  ancient  and  anarchic  intimacy,  types 
of  government  have  little  or  no  effect ;  it  is 
happy  or  unhappy,  by  its  own  sexual  whole- 
someness  and  genial  habit,  under  the  republic 
of  Switzerland  or  the  despotism  of  Siam.  Even 
64* 


THE     FREE     FAMILY 

a  republic  in  Siam  would  not  have  done  much 
towards  freeing  the  Siamese  Twins. 

The  problem  is  not  in  marriage,  but  in  sex; 
and  would  be  felt  under  the  freest  concubinage. 
Nevertheless,  the  overwhelming  mass  of  man- 
kind has  not  believed  in  freedom  in  this  matter, 
but  rather  in  a  more  or  less  lasting  tie.  Tribes 
and  civilizations  differ  about  the  occasions  on 
which  we  may  loosen  the  bond,  but  they  all 
agree  that  there  is  a  bond  to  be  loosened,  not 
a  mere  universal  detachment.  For  the  pur- 
poses of  this  book  I  am  not  concerned  to  dis- 
cuss that  mystical  view  of  marriage  in  which 
I  myself  believe :  the  great  European  tradition 
which  has  made  marriage  a  sacrament.  It  is 
enough  to  say  here  that  heathen  and  Christian 
alike  have  regarded  marriage  as  a  tie;  a  thing 
not  normally  to  be  sundered.  Briefly,  this  hu- 
man belief  in  a  sexual  bond  rests  on  a  principle 
of  which  the  modern  mind  has  made  a  very  in- 
adequate study.  It  is,  perhaps,  most  nearly 
paralleled  by  the  principle  of  the  second  wind  in 
walking. 

65 


THE     FREE     FAMILY 

The  principle  is  this :  that  in  everything 
worth  having,  even  in  every  pleasure,  there 
is  a  point  of  pain  or  tedium  that  must  be 
survived,  so  that  the  pleasure  may  revive  and 
endure.  The  joy  of  battle  comes  after  the  first 
fear  of  death;  the  joy  of  reading  Virgil  comes 
after  the  bore  of  learning  him ;  the  glow  of  the 
sea-bather  comes  after  the  icy  shock  of  the 
sea  bath;  and  the  success  of  the  marriage 
comes  after  the  failure  of  the  honeymoon.  All 
human  vows,  laws,  and  contracts  are  so  many 
ways  of  surviving  with  success  this  breaking 
point,  this  instant  of  potential  surrender. 

In  everything  on  this  earth  that  is  worth 
doing,  there  is  a  stage  when  no  one  would  do 
it,  except  for  necessity  or  honor.  It  is  then 
that  the  Institution  upholds  a  man  and  helps 
him  on  to  the  firmer  ground  ahead.  Whether 
this  solid  fact  of  human  nature  is  sufficient 
to  justify  the  sublime  dedication  of  Christian 
marriage  is  quite  another  matter,  it  is  amply 
sufficient  to  justify  the  general  human  feeling 
of  marriage  as  a  fixed  thing,  dissolution  of 
66 


which  is  a  fault  or,  at  least,  an  ignominy.    The 
essential  element  is  not  so  much  duration  as 
security.     Two  people  must  be  tied  together  in 
order  to  do  themselves  justice;  for  twenty  min- 
utes at  a  dance,  or  for  twenty  years  in  a  mar- 
riage.     In  both  cases  the  point  is,  that  if  a 
man  is  bored  in  the  first  five  minutes  he  must 
go  on  and  force  himself  to  be  happy.      Coercion 
is  a  kind  of  encouragement;  and  anarchy  (or 
what  some  call  liberty)   is  essentially  oppress- 
ive, because  it  is  essentially  discouraging.     If 
we  all  floated  in  the  air  like  bubbles,  free  to 
drift   anywhere   at   any  instant,   the   practical 
result  would  be  that  no   one  would  have  the 
courage  to  begin  a  conversation.     It  would  be 
so  embarrassing  to  start  a  sentence  in  a  friendly 
whisper,  and  then  have  to  shout  the  last  half 
of   it   because    the    other   party    was    floating 
away  into  the  free  and  formless  ether.      The 
two  must  hold  each  other  to  do  justice  to  each 
other.     If  Americans  can  be  divorced  for  "in- 
compatibility   of   temper "    I   cannot   conceive 
why  they  are  not  all  divorced.     I  have  known 
67 


THE     FREE     FAMILY 

many  happy  marriages,  but  never  a  compatible 
one.  The  whole  aim  of  marriage  is  to  fight 
through  and  survive  the  instant  when  incom- 
patibility becomes  unquestionable.  For  a  man 
and  a  woman,  as  such,  are  incompatible. 


68 


vni 

THE    WILDNESS    OF     DOMESTICITY 

IN  the  course  of  this  crude  study  we  shall  have 
to  touch  on  what  is  called  the  problem  of  pov- 
erty, especially  the  dehumanized  poverty  of 
modern  industrialism.  But  in  this  primary 
matter  of  the  ideal  the  difficulty  is  not  the  prob- 
lem of  poverty,  but  the  problem  of  wealth.  It 
is  the  special  psychology  of  leisure  and  luxury 
that  falsifies  life.  Some  experience  of  modern 
movements  of  the  sort  called  "  advanced  "  has 
led  me  to  the  conviction  that  they  generally 
repose  upon  some  experience  peculiar  to  the 
rich.  It  is  so  with  that  fallacy  of  free  love  of 
which  I  have  already  spoken ;  the  idea  of  sexu- 
ality as  a  string  of  episodes.  That  implies  a 
long  holiday  in  which  to  get  tired  of  one 
woman,  and  a  motor  car  in  which  to  wander 
looking  for  others;  it  also  implies  money  for 
69 


WILDNESS   OF    DOMESTICITY 

maintenances.  An  omnibus  conductor  has 
hardly  time  to  love  his  own  wife,  let  alone  other 
people's.  And  the  success  with  which  nuptial 
estrangements  are  depicted  in  modern  "prob- 
lem plays  "  is  due  to  the  fact  that  there  is 
only  one  thing  that  a  drama  cannot  depict — • 
that  is  a  hard  day's  work.  I  could  give  many 
other  instances  of  this  plutocratic  assumption 
behind  progressive  fads.  For  instance,  there 
is  a  plutocratic  assumption  behind  the  phrase 
"  Why  should  woman  be  economically  depend- 
ent upon  man?"  The  answer  is  that  among 
poor  and  practical  people  she  isn't;  except  in 
the  sense  in  which  he  is  dependent  upon  her. 
A  hunter  has  to  tear  his  clothes;  there  must 
be  somebody  to  mend  them.  A  fisher  has  to 
catch  fish ;  there  must  be  somebody  to  cook 
them.  It  is  surely  quite  clear  that  this  modern 
notion  that  woman  is  a  mere  "  pretty  clinging 
parasite,"  "  a  plaything,"  etc.,  arose  through 
the  somber  contemplation  of  some  rich  bank- 
ing family,  in  which  the  banker,  at  least,  went 
to  the  city  and  pretended  to  do  something, 
70 


WILDNESS    OF    DOMESTICITY 

while  the  banker's  wife  went  to  the  Park  and 
did  not  pretend  to  do  anything  at  all.  A  poor 
man  and  his  wife  are  a  business  partnership. 
If  one  partner  in  a  firm  of  publishers  interviews 
the  authors  while  the  other  interviews  the  clerks, 
is  one  of  them  economically  dependent?  Was 
Hodder  a  pretty  parasite  clinging  to  Stough- 
ton?  Was  Marshall  a  mere  plaything  for  Snel- 
grove  ? 

But  of  all  the  modern  notions  generated  by 
mere  wealth  the  worst  is  this:  the  notion  that 
domesticity  is  dull  and  tame.  Inside  the  home 
(they  say)  is  dead  decorum  and  routine;  out- 
side is  adventure  and  variety.  This  is  indeed 
a  rich  man's  opinion.  The  rich  man  knows 
that  his  own  house  moves  on  vast  and  sound- 
less wheels  of  wealth,  is  run  by  regiments  of 
servants,  by  a  swift  and  silent  ritual.  On  the 
other  hand,  every  sort  of  vagabondage  of  ro- 
mance is  open  to  him  in  the  streets  outside. 
He  has  plenty  of  money  and  can  afford  to  be 
a  tramp.  His  wildest  adventure  will  end  in 
a  restaurant,  while  the  yokel's  tamest  adven- 
71 


WILDNESS   OF   DOMESTICITY 

ture  may  end  in  a  police-court.  If  he  smashes 
a  window  he  can  pay  for  it;  if  he  smashes  a 
man  he  can  pension  him.  He  can  (like  the  mil- 
lionaire in  the  story)  buy  an  hotel  to  get  a 
glass  of  gin.  And  because  he,  the  luxurious 
man,  dictates  the  tone  of  nearly  all  "  advanced  " 
and  "progressive"  thought,  we  have  almost 
forgotten  what  a  home  really  means  to  the  over- 
whelming millions  of  mankind. 

For  the  truth  is,  that  to  the  moderately  poor 
the  home  is  the  only  place  of  liberty.  Nay, 
it  is  the  only  place  of  anarchy.  It  is  the  only 
spot  on  the  earth  where  a  man  can  alter  ar- 
rangements suddenly,  make  an  experiment  or 
indulge  in  a  whim.  Everywhere  else  he  goes 
he  must  accept  the  strict  rules  of  the  shop,  inn, 
club,  or  museum  that  he  happens  to  enter.  He 
can  eat  his  meals  on  the  floor  in  his  own  house 
if  he  likes.  I  often  do  it  myself;  it  gives  a 
curious,  childish,  poetic,  picnic  feeling.  There 
would  be  considerable  trouble  if  I  tried  to  do  it 
in  an  A.  B.  C.  tea-shop.  A  man  can  wear  a 
dressing-gown  and  slippers  in  his  house;  while 
72 


WILDNESS   OF    DOMESTICITY 

I  am  sure  that  this  would  not  be  permitted  at 
the  Savoy,  though  I  never  actually  tested  the 
point.  If  you  go  to  a  restaurant  you  must 
drink  some  of  the  wines  on  the  wine  list,  all  of 
them  if  you  insist,  but  certainly  some  of  them. 
But  if  you  have  a  house  and  garden  you  can 
try  to  make  hollyhock  tea  or  convolvulus  wine 
if  you  like.  For  a  plain,  hard-working  man 
the  home  is  not  the  one  tame  place  in  the  world 
of  adventure.  It  is  the  one  wild  place  in  the 
world  of  rules  and  set  tasks.  The  home  is  the 
one  place  where  he  can  put  the  carpet  on  the 
ceiling  or  the  slates  on  the  floor  if  he  wants 
to.  When  a  man  spends  every  night  stagger- 
ing from  bar  to  bar  or  from  music-hall  to  music- 
hall,  we  say  that  he  is  living  an  irregular  life. 
But  he  is  not ;  he  is  living  a  highly  regular 
life,  under  the  dull,  and  often  oppressive,  laws 
of  such  places.  Sometimes  he  is  not  allowed 
even  to  sit  down  in  the  bars ;  and  frequently  he 
is  not  allowed  to  sing  in  the  music-halls. 
Hotels  may  be  defined  as  places  where  you  are 
forced  to  dress;  and  theaters  may  be  defined 
73 


WILDNESS   OF    DOMESTICITY 

as  places  where  you  are  forbidden  to  smoke. 
'A  man  can  only  picnic  at  home. 

Now  I  take,  as  I  have  said,  this  small  human 
omnipotence,  this  possession  of  a  definite  cell 
or  chamber  of  liberty,  as  the  working  model 
for  the  present  inquiry.  Whether  we  can  give 
every  Englishman  a  free  home  of  his  own  or 
not,  at  least  we  should  desire  it ;  and  he  desires 
it.  For  the  moment  we  speak  of  what  he  wants, 
not  of  what  he  expects  to  get.  He  wants,  for 
instance,  a  separate  house;  he  does  not  want 
a  semi-detached  house.  He  may  be  forced  in 
the  commercial  race  to  share  one  wall  with  an- 
other man.  Similarly  he  might  be  forced  in 
a  three-legged  race  to  share  one  leg  with  an- 
other man ;  but  it  is  not  so  that  he  pictures 
himself  in  his  dreams  of  elegance  and  liberty. 
Again,  he  does  not  desire  a  flat.  He  can  eat 
and  sleep  and  praise  God  in  a  flat;  he  can  eat 
and  sleep  and  praise  God  in  a  railway  train. 
But  a  railway  train  is  not  a  house,  because  it 
is  a  house  on  wheels.  And  a  flat  is  not  a  house, 
because  it  is  a  house  on  stilts.  An  idea  of 
74? 


WILDNESS    OF   DOMESTICITY 

earthy  contact  and  foundation,  as  well  as  an 
idea  of  separation  and  independence,  is  a  part 
of  this  instructive  human  picture. 

I  take,  then,  this  one  institution  as  a  test. 
As  every  normal  man  desires  a  woman,  and 
children  born  of  a  woman,  every  normal  man 
desires  a  house  of  his  own  to  put  them  into. 
He  does  not  merely  want  a  roof  above  him  and 
a  chair  below  him;  he  wants  an  objective  and 
visible  kingdom ;  a  fire  at  which  he  can  cook 
what  food  he  likes,  a  door  he  can  open  to  what 
friends  he  chooses.  This  is  the  normal  appetite 
of  men ;  I  do  not  say  there  are  not  exceptions. 
There  may  be  saints  above  the  need  and  philan- 
thropists below  it.  Opalstein,  now  he  is  a 
duke,  may  have  got  used  to  more  than  this ; 
and  when  he  was  a  convict  may  have  got  used 
to  less.  But  the  normality  of  the  thing  is 
enormous.  To  give  nearly  everybody  ordinary 
houses  would  please  nearly  everybody ;  that 
is  what  I  assert  without  apology.  Now  in 
modern  England  (as  you  eagerly  point  out) 
it  is  very  difficult  to  give  nearly  everybody 


WILDNESS   OF   DOMESTICITY 

houses.  Quite  so;  I  merely  set  up  the  desider- 
atum; and  ask  the  reader  to  leave  it  standing 
there  while  he  turns  with  me  to  a  consideration 
of  what  really  happens  in  the  social  wars  of 
our  time. 


IX 

HISTORY     OF     HUDGE     AND    GUDGE 

THERE  is,  let  us  say,  a  certain  filthy  rookery 
in  Hoxton,  dripping  with  disease  and  honey- 
combed with  crime  and  promiscuity.  There 
are,  let  us  say,  two  noble  and  courageous  young 
men,  of  pure  intentions  and  (if  you  prefer  it) 
noble  birth ;  let  us  call  them  Hudge  and  Gudge. 
Hudge,  let  us  say,  is  of  a  bustling  sort;  he 
points  out  that  the  people  must  at  all  costs 
be  got  out  of  this  den;  he  subscribes  and  col- 
lects money,  but  he  finds  (despite  the  large  fi- 
nancial interests  of  the  Hudges)  that  the  thing 
will  have  to  be  done  on  the  cheap  if  it  is  to  be 
done  on  the  spot.  He,  therefore,  runs  up  a 
row  of  tall  bare  tenements  like  beehives;  and 
soon  has  all  the  poor  people  bundled  into  their 
little  brick  cells,  which  are  certainly  better 
than  their  old  quarters,  in  so  far  as  they  are 
weather  proof,  well  ventilated  and  supplied 
77 


HUDGE     AND     GUDGE 

with  clean  water.  But  Gudge  has  a  more  deli- 
cate nature.  He  feels  a  nameless  something 
lacking  in  the  little  brick  boxes ;  he  raises  num- 
berless objections  ;  he  even  assails  the  celebrated 
Hudge  Report,  with  the  Gudge  Minority  Re- 
port ;  and  by  the  end  of  a  year  or  so  has  come 
to  telling  Hudge  heatedly  that  the  people  were 
much  happier  where  they  were  before.  As  the 
people  preserve  in  both  places  precisely  the 
same  air  of  dazed  amiability,  it  is  very  difficult 
to  find  out  which  is  right.  But  at  least  one 
might  safely  say  that  no  people  ever  liked 
stench  or  starvation  as  such,  but  only  some 
peculiar  pleasures  entangled  with  them.  Not 
so  feels  the  sensitive  Gudge.  Long  before  the 
final  quarrel  (Hudge  v.  Gudge  and  Another), 
Gudge  has  succeeded  in  persuading  himself  that 
slums  and  stinks  are  really  very  nice  things ; 
that  the  habit  of  sleeping  fourteen  in  a  room 
is  what  has  made  our  England  great ;  and  that 
the  smell  of  open  drains  is  absolutely  essential 
to  the  rearing  of  a  viking  breed. 

But,  meanwhile,  has  there  been  no  degenera- 
78 


HUDGE     AND     GUDGE 

tion  in  Hudge?  Alas,  I  fear  there  has.  Those 
maniacally  ugly  buildings  which  he  originally 
put  up  as  unpretentious  sheds  barely  to  shelter 
human  life,  grow  every  day  more  and  more 
lovely  to  his  deluded  eye.  Things  he  would 
never  have  dreamed  of  defending,  except  as 
crude  necessities,  things  like  common  kitchens 
or  infamous  asbestos  stoves,  begin  to  shine 
quite  sacredly  before  him,  merely  because  they 
reflect  the  wrath  of  Gudge.  He  maintains, 
with  the  aid  of  eager  little  books  by  Socialists, 
that  man  is  really  happier  in  a  hive  than  in  a 
house.  The  practical  difficulty  of  keeping  to- 
tal strangers  out  of  your  bedroom  he  describes 
as  Brotherhood ;  and  the  necessity  for  climbing 
twenty-three  flights  of  cold  stone  stairs,  I  dare 
say  he  calls  Effort.  The  net  result  of  their 
philanthropic  adventure  is  this:  that  one  has 
come  to  defending  indefensible  slums  and  still 
more  indefensible  slum-landlords ;  while  the 
other  has  come  to  treating  as  divine  the  sheds 
and  pipes  which  he  only  meant  as  desperate. 
Gudge  is  now  a  corrupt  and  apoplectic  old 
79 


HUDGE     AND     GUDGE 

Tory  in  the  Carlton  Club ;  if  you  mention  pov- 
erty to  him  he  roars  at  you  in  a  thick,  hoarse 
voice  something  that  is  conjectured  to  be  "Do 
'em  good !  "  Nor  is  Hudge  more  happy ;  for 
he  is  a  lean  vegetarian  with  a  gray,  pointed 
beard  and  an  unnaturally  easy  smile,  who  goes 
about  telling  everybody  that  at  last  we  shall 
all  sleep  in  one  universal  bedroom ;  and  he  lives 
in  a  Garden  City,  like  one  forgotten  of  God. 

Such  is  the  lamentable  history  of  Hudge  and 
Gudge;  which  I  merely  introduce  as  a  type  of 
an  endless  and  exasperating  misunderstanding 
which  is  always  occurring  in  modern  England. 
To  get  men  out  of  a  rookery  men  are  put 
into  a  tenement;  and  at  the  beginning  the 
healthy  human  soul  loathes  them  both.  A 
man's  first  desire  is  to  get  away  as  far  as 
possible  from  the  rookery,  even  should  his  mad 
course  lead  him  to  a  model  dwelling.  The 
second  desire  is,  naturally,  to  get  away  from 
the  model  dwelling,  even  if  it  should  lead  a  man 
back  to  the  rookery.  But  I  am  neither  a 
Hudgian  nor  a  Gudgian ;  and  I  think  the  mis- 
80 


HUDGE     AND     GUDGE 

takes  of  these  two  famous  and  fascinating  per- 
sons arose  from  one  simple  fact.  They  arose 
from  the  fact  that  neither  Hudge  nor  Gudge 
had  ever  thought  for  an  instant  what  sort  of 
house  a  man  might  probably  like  for  himself. 
In  short,  they  did  not  begin  with  the  ideal; 
and,  therefore,  were  not  practical  politicians. 

We  may  now  return  to  the  purpose  of  our 
awkward  parenthesis  about  the  praise  of  the 
future  and  the  failures  of  the  past.  A  house 
of  his  own  being  the  obvious  ideal  for  every 
man,  we  may  now  ask  (taking  this  need  as 
typical  of  all  such  needs)  why  he  hasn't  got 
it ;  and  whether  it  is  in  any  philosophical  sense 
his  own  fault.  Now,  I  think  that  in  some 
philosophical  sense  it  is  his  own  fault;  I  think 
in  a  yet  more  philosophical  sense  it  is  the  fault 
of  his  philosophy.  And  this  is  what  I  have 
now  to  attempt  to  explain. 

Burke,  a  fine  rhetorician,  who  rarely  faced 
realities,  said,  I  think,  that  an  Englishman's 
house  is  his  castle.  This  is  honestly  entertain- 
ing; for  as  it  happens  the  Englishman  is  al- 
81 


HUDGE     AND     GUDGE 

most  the  only  man  in  Europe  whose  house  is 
not  his  castle.  Nearly  everywhere  else  exists 
the  assumption  of  peasant  proprietorship ;  that 
a  poor  man  may  be  a  landlord,  though  he  is 
only  lord  of  his  own  land.  Making  the  land- 
lord and  the  tenant  the  same  person  has  cer- 
tain trivial  advantages,  as  that  the  tenant  pays 
no  rent,  while  the  landlord  does  a  little  work. 
But  I  am  not  concerned  with  the  defense  of 
small  proprietorship,  but  merely  with  the  fact 
that  it  exists  almost  everywhere  except  in  Eng- 
land. It  is  also  true,  however,  that  this  estate 
of  small  possession  is  attacked  everywhere  to- 
day; it  has  never  existed  among  ourselves,  and 
it  may  be  destroyed  among  our  neighbors.  We 
have,  therefore,  to  ask  ourselves  what  it  is  in 
human  affairs  generally,  and  in  this  domestic 
ideal  in  particular,  that  has  really  ruined  the 
natural  human  creation,  especially  in  this 
country. 

Man  has  always  lost  his  way.  He  has  been 
a  tramp  ever  since  Eden ;  but  he  always  knew, 
or  thought  he  Imew,  what  he  was  looking  for. 


HUDGE     AND     GUDGE 

Every  man  has  a  house  somewhere  in  the  elabo- 
rate cosmos  ;  his  house  waits  for  him  waist  deep 
in  slow  Norfolk  rivers  or  sunning  itself  upon 
Sussex  downs.  Man  has  always  been  looking 
for  that  home  which  is  the  subject  matter  of 
this  book.  But  in  the  bleak  and  blinding  hail  of 
skepticism  to  which  he  has  been  now  so  long 
subjected,  he  has  begun  for  the  first  time  to  be 
chilled,  not  merely  in  his  hopes,  but  in  his  de- 
sires. For  the  first  time  in  history  he  begins 
really  to  doubt  the  object  of  his  wanderings 
on  the  earth.  He  has  always  lost  his  way; 
but  now  he  has  lost  his  address. 

Under  the  pressure  of  certain  upper-class 
philosophies  (or  in  other  words,  under  the  pres- 
sure of  Hudge  and  Gudge)  the  average  man 
has  really  become  bewildered  about  the  goal 
of  his  efforts ;  and  his  efforts,  therefore,  grow 
feebler  and  feebler.  His  simple  notion  of  hav- 
ing a  home  of  his  own  is  derided  as  bourgeois, 
as  sentimental,  or  as  despicably  Christian, 
tinder  various  verbal  forms  he  is  recommended 
to  go  on  to  the  streets — which  is  called  In- 


HUDGE     AND     GUDGE 

dividualism ;  or  to  the  work-house — which  is 
called  Collectivism.  We  shall  consider  this 
process  somewhat  more  carefully  in  a  moment. 
But  it  may  be  said  here  that  Hudge  and  Gudge, 
or  the  governing  class  generally,  will  never  fail 
for  lack  of  some  modern  phrase  to  cover  their 
ancient  predominance.  The  great  lords  will 
refuse  the  English  peasant  his  three  acres  and 
a  cow  on  advanced  grounds,  if  they  cannot  re- 
fuse it  longer  on  reactionary  grounds.  They 
will  deny  him  the  three  acres  on  grounds  of 
State  Ownership.  They  will  forbid  him  the 
cow  on  grounds  of  humanitarianism. 

And  this  brings  us  to  the  ultimate  analysis 
of  this  singular  influence  that  has  prevented 
doctrinal  demands  by  the  English  people. 
There  are,  I  believe,  some  who  still  deny  that 
England  is  governed  by  an  oligarchy.  It  is 
quite  enough  for  me  to  know  that  a  man  might 
have  gone  to  sleep  some  thirty  years  ago  over 
the  day's  newspaper  and  woke  up  last  week 
over  the  later  newspaper,  and  fancied  he  was 
reading  about  the  same  people.  In  one  paper 
84 


HUDGE     AND    GUDGE 

he  would  have  found  a  Lord  Robert  Cecil,  a 
Mr.  Gladstone,  a  Mr.  Lyttleton,  a  Churchill, 
a  Chamberlain,  a  Trevelyan,  an  Acland.  In 
the  other  paper  he  would  find  a  Lord  Robert 
Cecil,  a  Mr.  Gladstone,  a  Mr.  Lyttleton,  a 
Churchill,  a  Chamberlain,  a  Trevelyan,  an  Ac- 
land.  If  this  is  not  being  governed  by  families 
I  cannot  imagine  what  it  is.  I  suppose  it  is 
being  governed  by  extraordinary  democratic 
coincidences. 


85 


OPPRESSION    BY    OPTIMISM 

BUT  we  are  not  here  concerned  with  the  nature 
and  existence  of  the  aristocracy,  but  with  the 
origin  of  its  peculiar  power;  why  is  it  the  last 
of  the  true  oligarchies  of  Europe;  and  why 
does  there  seem  no  very  immediate  prospect 
of  our  seeing  the  end  of  it?  The  explanation 
is  simple  though  it  remains  strangely  unnoticed. 
The  friends  of  aristocracy  often  praise  it  for 
preserving  ancient  and  gracious  traditions. 
The  enemies  of  aristocracy  often  blame  it  for 
clinging  to  cruel  or  antiquated  customs.  Both 
its  enemies  and  its  friends  are  wrong.  Gener- 
ally speaking  the  aristocracy  does  not  preserve 
either  good  or  bad  traditions ;  it  does  not  pre- 
serve anything  except  game.  Who  would 
dream  of  looking  among  aristocrats  anywhere 
for  an  old  custom?  One  might  as  well  look 
for  an  old  costume!  The  god  of  the  aristo- 
86 


OPPRESSION    BY    OPTIMISM 

crats  is  not  tradition,  but  fashion,  which  is 
the  opposite  of  tradition.  If  you  wanted  to 
find  an  old-world  Norwegian  head-dress,  would 
you  look  for  it  in  the  Scandinavian  Smart  Set? 
No ;  the  aristocrats  never  have  customs ;  at  the 
best  they  have  habits,  like  the  animals.  Only 
the  mob  has  customs. 

The  real  power  of  the  English  aristocrats 
has  lain  in  exactly  the  opposite  of  tradition. 
The  simple  key  to  the  power  of  our  upper 
classes  is  this:  that  they  have  always  kept 
carefully  on  the  side  of  what  is  called  Progress. 
They  have  always  been  up  to  date,  and  this 
comes  quite  easy  to  an  aristocracy.  For  the 
aristocracy  are  the  supreme  instances  of  that 
frame  of  mind  of  which  we  spoke  just  now. 
Novelty  is  to  them  a  luxury  verging  on  a  ne- 
cessity. They,  above  all,  are  so  bored  with 
the  past  and  with  the  present,  that  they  gape, 
with  a  horrible  hunger,  for  the  future. 

But  whatever  else  the  great  lords  forgot  they 
never  forgot  that  it  was  their  business  to  stand 
for  the  new  things,  for  whatever  was  being  most 
87 


OPPRESSION     BY    OPTIMISM 

talked  about  among  university  dons  or  fussy 
financiers.  Thus  they  were  on  the  side  of  the 
Reformation  against  the  Church,  of  the  Whigs 
against  the  Stuarts,  of  the  Baconian  science 
against  the  old  philosophy,  of  the  manufactur- 
ing system  against  the  operatives,  and  (to-day) 
of  the  increased  power  of  the  State  against  the 
old-fashioned  individualists.  In  short,  the  rich 
are  always  modern ;  it  is  their  business.  But 
the  immediate  effect  of  this  fact  upon  the  ques- 
tion we  are  studying  is  somewhat  singular. 

In  each  of  the  separate  holes  or  quandaries 
in  which  the  ordinary  Englishman  has  been 
placed,  he  has  been  told  that  his  situation  is, 
for  some  particular  reason,  all  for  the  best. 
He  woke  up  one  fine  morning  and  discovered 
that  the  public  things,  which  for  eight  hundred 
years  he  had  used  at  once  as  inns  and  sanctu- 
aries, had  all  been  suddenly  and  savagely  abol- 
ished, to  increase  the  private  wealth  of  about 
six  or  seven  men.  One  would  think  he  might 
have  been  annoyed  at  that;  in  many  places  he 
was,  and  was  put  down  by  the  soldiery.  But 
it  was  not  merely  the  army  that  kept  him  quiet. 
88 


OPPRESSION     BY    OPTIMISM 

He  was  kept  quiet  by  the  sages  as  well  as  the 
soldiers ;  the  six  or  seven  men  who  took  away 
the  inns  of  the  poor  told  him  that  they  were 
not  doing-  it  for  themselves,  but  for  the  religion 
of  the  future,  the  great  dawn  of  Protestantism 
and  truth.  So  whenever  a  seventeenth  century 
noble  was  caught  pulling  down  a  peasant's 
fence  and  stealing  his  field,  the  noble  pointed 
excitedly  at  the  face  of  Charles  I.  or  James 
II.  (which  at  that  moment,  perhaps,  wore  a 
cross  expression)  and  thus  diverted  the  simple 
peasant's  attention.  The  great  Puritan  lords 
created  the  Commonwealth,  and  destroyed  the 
common  land.  They  saved  their  poorer  coun- 
trymen from  the  disgrace  of  paying  Ship 
Money,  by  taking  from  them  the  plow  money 
and  spade  money  which  they  were  doubtless 
too  weak  to  guard.  A  fine  old  English  rhyme 
has  Immortalized  this  easy  aristocratic  habit — 

You  prosecute  the  man  or  woman 
Who  steals  the  goose  from  off  the  common, 
But  leave  the  larger  felon  loose 
Who  steals  the  common  from  the  goose. 
§9 


OPPRESSION    BY    OPTIMISM 

But  here,  as  in  the  case  of  the  monasteries, 
we  confront  the  strange  problem  of  submission. 
If  they  stole  the  common  from  the  goose,  one 
can  only  say  that  he  was  a  great  goose  to 
stand  it.  The  truth  is  that  they  reasoned  with 
the  goose;  they  explained  to  him  that  all  this 
was  needed  to  get  the  Stuart  fox  over  seas. 
So  in  the  nineteenth  century  the  great  nobles 
who  became  mine-owners  and  railway  directors 
earnestly  assured  everybody  that  they  did  not 
do  this  from  preference,  but  owing  to  a  newly 
discovered  Economic  Law.  So  the  prosperous 
politicians  of  our  own  generation  introduce 
bills  to  prevent  poor  mothers  from  going  about 
with  their  own  babies ;  or  they  calmly  forbid 
their  tenants  to  drink  beer  in  public  inns.  But 
this  insolence  is  not  (as  you  would  suppose) 
howled  at  by  everybody  as  outrageous  feudal- 
ism. It  is  gently  rebuked  as  Socialism.  For 
an  aristocracy  is  always  progressive;  it  is  a 
form  of  going  the  pace.  Their  parties  grow 
later  and  later  at  night;  for  they  are 
to  live  to-morrow. 

90 


XI 

THE      HOMELESSNESS      OF      JONES 

THUS  the  Future  of  which  we  spoke  at  the 
beginning  has  (in  England  at  least)  always 
been  the  ally  of  tyranny.  The  ordinary  Eng- 
lishman has  been  duped  out  of  his  old  pos- 
sessions, such  as  they  were,  and  always  in  the 
name  of  progress.  The  destroyers  of  the  ab- 
beys took  away  his  bread  and  gave  him  a  stone, 
assuring  him  that  it  was  a  precious  stone,  the 
white  pebble  of  the  Lord's  elect.  They  took 
away  his  maypole  and  his  original  rural  life 
and  promised  him  instead  the  Golden  Age  of 
Peace  and  Commerce  inaugurated  at  the  Crys- 
tal Palace.  And  now  they  are  taking  away  the 
little  that  remains  of  his  dignity  as  a  house- 
holder and  the  head  of  a  family,  promising  him 
instead  Utopias  which  are  called  (appropri- 
ately enough)  "  Anticipations  "  or  "  News  from 
Nowhere."  We  come  back,  in  fact,  to  the 
91 


HOMELESSNESS    OF    JONES 

main  feature  which  has  already  been  men- 
tioned. The  past  is  communal:  the  future 
must  be  individualist.  In  the  past  are  all  the 
evils  of  democracy,  variety  and  violence  and 
doubt,,  but  the  future  is  pure  despotism,  for 
the  future  is  pure  caprice.  Yesterday,  I  know 
I  was  a  human  fool,  but  to-morrow  I  can  easily 
be  the  Superman. 

The  modern  Englishman,  however,  is  like 
a  man  who  should  be  perpetually  kept  out,  for 
one  reason  after  another,  from  the  house  in 
which  he  had  meant  his  married  life  to  begin. 
This  man  (Jones  let  us  call  him)  has  alwa3'S 
desired  the  divinely  ordinary  things ;  he  has 
married  for  love,  he  has  chosen  or  built  a  small 
house  that  fits  like  a  coat;  he  is  ready  to  be  a 
great  grandfather  and  a  local  god.  And  just 
as  he  is  moving  in,  something  goes  wrong. 
Some  tyranny,  personal  or  political,  suddenljr 
debars  him  from  the  home;  and  he  has  to  take 
his  meals  in  the  front  garden.  A  passing 
philosopher  (who  is  also,  by  a  mere  coincidence 
the  man  who  turned  him  out)  pauses,  and  lean 
92 


HOMELESSNESS    OF    JONES 

ing  elegantly  on  the  railings,  explains  to  him 
that  he  is  now  living  that  bold  life  upon  the 
bounty  of  nature  which  will  be  the  life  of  the 
sublime  future.  He  finds  life  in  the  front  gar- 
den more  bold  than  bountiful,  and  has  to  move 
into  mean  lodgings  in  the  next  spring.  The 
philosopher  (who  turned  him  out),  happening 
to  call  at  these  lodgings,  with  the  probable 
intention  of  raising  the  rent,  stops  to  explain 
to  him  that  he  is  now  in  the  real  life  of  mercan- 
tile endeavor;  the  economic  struggle  between 
him  and  the  landlady  is  the  only  thing  out  of 
which,  in  the  sublime  future,  the  wealth  of  na- 
tions can  come.  He  is  defeated  in  the  eco- 
nomic struggle,  and  goes  to  the  workhouse. 
The  philosopher  who  turned  him  out  (happen- 
ing at  that  very  moment  to  be  inspecting  the 
workhouse)  assures  him  that  he  is  now  at  last 
in  that  golden  republic  which  is  the  goal  of 
mankind ;  he  is  in  an  equal,  scientific,  Socialistic 
commonwealth,  owned  by  the  State  and  ruled 
by  public  officers ;  in  fact,  the  commonwealth  of 
the  sublime  future. 

93 


HOMELESSNESS    OF    JONES 

Nevertheless,  there  are  signs  that  the  irra- 
tional Jones  still  dreams  at  night  of  his  old 
idea  of  having  an  ordinary  home.  He  asked 
for  so  little,  and  he  has  been  offered  so  much. 
He  has  been  offered  bribes  of  worlds  and  sys- 
tems ;  he  has  been  offered  Eden  and  Utopia  and 
the  New  Jerusalem,  and  he  only  wanted  a  house ; 
and  that  has  been  refused  him. 

Such  an  apologue  is  literally  no  exaggera- 
tion of  the  facts  of  English  history.  The 
rich  did  literally  turn  the  poor  out  of  the  old 
guest  house  on  to  the  road,  briefly  telling  them 
that  it  was  the  road  of  progress.  They  did 
literally  force  them  into  factories  and  the  mod- 
ern wage-slavery,  assuring  them  all  the  time 
that  this  was  the  only  way  to  wealth  and  civili- 
zation. Just  as  they  had  dragged  the  rustic 
from  the  convent  food  and  ale  by  saying  that 
the  streets  of  heaven  were  paved  with  gold, 
so  now  they  dragged  him  from  the  village 
food  and  ale  by  telling  him  that  the  streets  of 
London  were  paved  with  gold.  As  he  entered 
the  gloomy  porch  of  Puritanism,  so  he  entered 
94 


HOMELESSNESS    OF    JONES 

the  gloomy  porch  of  Industrialism,  being  told 
that  each  of  them  was  the  gate  of  the  future. 
Hitherto  he  has  only  gone  from  prison  to 
prison,  nay,  into  darkening  prisons,  for  Cal- 
vinism opened  one  small  window  upon  heaven. 
And  now  he  is  asked,  in  the  same  educated  and 
authoritative  tones,  to  enter  another  dark 
porch,  at  which  he  has  to  surrender,  into  unseen 
hands,  his  children,  his  small  possessions  and 
all  the  habits  of  his  fathers. 

Whether  this  last  opening  be  in  truth  any 
more  inviting  than  the  old  openings  of  Puri- 
tanism and  Industrialism  can  be  discussed  later. 
But  there  can  be  little  doubt,  I  think,  that  if 
some  form  of  Collectivism  is  imposed  upon  Eng- 
land it  will  be  imposed,  as  everything  else  has 
been,  by  an  instructed  political  class  upon  a 
people  partly  apathetic  and  partly  hypnotized. 
The  aristocracy  will  be  as  ready  to  "  adminis- 
ter" Collectivism  as  they  were  to  administer 
Puritanism  or  Manchesterism ;  in  some  ways 
such  a  centralized  political  power  is  necessarily 
attractive  to  them.  It  will  not  be  so  hard  as 
95 


HOMELESSNESS    OF    JONES 

some  innocent  Socialists  seem  to  suppose  to 
induce  the  Honorable  Tomnoddy  to  take  over 
the  milk  supply  as  well  as  the  stamp  supply — 
at  an  increased  salary.  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  has 
remarked  that  rich  men  are  better  than  poor 
men  on  parish  councils  because  they  are  free 
from  "  financial  timidity."  Now,  the  English 
ruling  class  is  quite  free  from  financial  timidity. 
The  Duke  of  Sussex  will  be  quite  ready  to  be 
Administrator  of  Sussex  at  the  same  screw. 
Sir  William  Harcourt,  that  typical  aristocrat, 
put  it  quite  correcty.  "We"  (that  is,  the 
aristocracy)  "  are  all  Socialists  now." 

But  this  is  not  the  essential  note  on  which 
I  desire  to  end.  My  main  contention  is  that, 
whether  necessary  or  not,  both  Industrialism 
and  Collectivism  have  been  accepted  as  neces- 
sities— not  as  naked  ideals  or  desires.  Nobody 
liked  the  Manchester  School;  it  was  endured 
as  the  only  way  of  producing  wealth.  Nobody 
likes  the  Marxian  school;  it  is  endured  as  the 
only  way  of  preventing  poverty.  Nobody's 
real  heart  is  in  the  idea  of  preventing  a  free 
96 


HOMELESSNESS    OF    JONES 

man  from  owning  his  own  farm,  or  an  old 
woman  from  cultivating  her  own  garden,  any 
more  than  anybody's  real  heart  was  in  the 
heartless  battle  of  the  machines.  The  purpose 
of  this  chapter  is  sufficiently  served  in  indicat- 
ing that  this  proposal  also  is  a  pis  alter,  a  des- 
perate second  best — like  teetotalism.  I  do  not 
propose  to  prove  here  that  Socialism  is  a  poi- 
son ;  it  is  enough  if  I  maintain  that  it  is  a  medi- 
cine and  not  a  wine. 

The  idea  of  private  property  universal  but 
private,  the  idea  of  families  free  but  still  fami- 
lies, of  domesticity  democratic  but  still  domes- 
tic, of  one  man  one  house — this  remains  the  real 
vision  and  magnet  of  mankind.  The  world 
may  accept  something  more  official  and  general, 
less  human  and  intimate.  But  the  world  will 
be  like  a  broken-hearted  woman  who  makes  a 
humdrum  marriage  because  she  may  not  make 
a  happy  one;  Socialism  may  be  the  world's 
deliverance,  but  it  is  not  the  world's  desire. 


97 


PART   II 

IMPERIALISM,    OR    THE    MISTAKE 
ABOUT   MAN 


THE    CHARM    OF    JINGOISM 

I  HAVE  cast  about  widely  to  find  a  title  for  this 
section ;  and  I  confess  that  the  word  "  Imperial- 
ism "  is  a  clumsy  version  of  my  meaning.  But 
no  other  word  came  nearer;  "Militarism" 
would  have  been  even  more  misleading,  and 
*'  The  Superman  "  makes  nonsense  of  any  dis- 
cussion that  he  enters.  Perhaps,  upon  the 
whole,  the  word  "  Csesarism  "  would  have  been 
better ;  but  I  desire  a  popular  word ;  and  Im- 
perialism (as  the  reader  will  perceive)  does 
cover  for  the  most  part  the  men  and  theories 
that  I  mean  to  discuss. 

This  small  confusion  is  increased,  however, 
by  the  fact  that  I  do  also  disbelieve  in  Im- 
perialism in  its  popular  sense,  as  a  mode  or 
theory  of  the  patriotic  sentiment  of  this  coun- 
try. But  popular  Imperialism  in  England  has 
very  little  to  do  with  the  sort  of  Csesarean  Im- 
101 

'  '•*'•'  VrY 

u»v  wml 


CHARM    OF    JINGOISM 

perialism  I  wish  to  sketch.  I  differ  from  the 
Colonial  idealism  of  Rhodes  and  Kipling;  but 
I  do  not  think,  as  some  of  its  opponents  do, 
that  it  is  an  insolent  creation  of  English  harsh- 
ness and  rapacity.  Imperialism,  I  think,  is  a 
fiction  created,  not  by  English  hardness,  but  by 
English  softness ;  nay,  in  a  sense,  even  by  Eng- 
lish kindness. 

The  reasons  for  believing  in  Australia  are 
mostly  as  sentimental  as  the  most  sentimental 
reasons  for  believing  in  heaven.  New  South 
Wales  is  quite  literally  regarded  as  a  place 
where  the  wicked  cease  from  troubling  and  the 
weary  are  at  rest ;  that  is,  a  paradise  for  uncles 
who  have  turned  dishonest  and  for  nephews 
who  are  born  tired.  British  Columbia  is  in 
strict  sense  a  fairyland;  it  is  a  world  where 
a  magic  and  irrational  luck  is  supposed  to  at- 
tend the  youngest  sons.  This  strange  opti- 
mism about  the  ends  of  the  earth  is  an  English 
weakness ;  but  to  show  that  it  is  not  a  coldness 
or  a  harshness  it  is  quite  sufficient  to  say  that 
no  one  shared  it  more  than  that  gigantic  Eng- 
102 


CHARM    OF    JINGOISM 

lish  sentimentalist — the  great  Charles  Dickens. 
The  end  of  "  David  Copperfield  "  is  unreal  not 
merely  because  it  is  an  optimistic  ending,  but 
because  it  is  an  Imperialistic  ending.  The  de- 
corous British  happiness  planned  out  for 
David  Copperfield  and  Agnes  would  be  embar- 
rassed by  the  perpetual  presence  of  the  hope- 
less tragedy  of  Emily,  or  the  more  hopeless 
farce  of  Micawber.  Therefore,  both  Emily 
and  Micawber  are  shipped  off  to  a  vague  colony 
where  changes  come  over  them  with  no  conceiv- 
able cause,  except  the  climate.  The  tragic 
woman  becomes  contented  and  the  comic  man 
becomes  responsible,  solely  as  the  result  of  a 
sea  voyage  and  the  first  sight  of  a  kangaroo. 
To  Imperialism  in  the  light  political  sense, 
therefore,  my  only  objection  is  that  it  is  an 
illusion  of  comfort ;  that  an  Empire  whose  heart 
is  failing  should  be  specially  proud  of  the  ex- 
tremities, is  to  me  no  more  sublime  a  fact  than 
that  an  old  dandy  whose  brain  is  gone  should 
still  be  proud  of  his  legs.  It  consoles  men  for 
the  evident  ugliness  and  apathy  of  England 
10S 


CHARM    OF    JINGOISM 

with  legends  of  fair  youth  and  heroic  strenuous- 
ness  in  distant  continents  and  islands.  A  man 
can  sit  amid  the  squalor  of  Seven  Dials  and  feel 
that  life  is  innocent  and  godlike  in  the  bush 
or  on  the  veldt.  Just  so  a  man  might  sit  in 
the  squalor  of  Seven  Dials  and  feel  that  life 
was  innocent  and  godlike  in  Brixton  and  Surbi- 
ton.  Brixton  and  Surbiton  are  "  new  " ;  they 
are  expanding ;  they  are  "  nearer  to  nature," 
in  the  sense  that  they  have  eaten  up  nature  mile 
by  mile.  The  only  objection  is  the  objection 
of  fact.  The  young  men  of  Brixton  are  not 
young  giants.  The  lovers  of  Surbiton  are  not 
all  pagan  poets,  singing  with  the  sweet  energy 
of  the  spring.  Nor  are  the  people  of  the  Col- 
onies when  you  meet  them  young  giants  or 
pagan  poets.  They  are  mostly  Cockneys  who 
have  lost  their  last  music  of  real  things  by 
getting  out  of  the  sound  of  Bow  Bells.  Mr. 
Rudyard  Kipling,  a  man  of  real  though  decad- 
ent genius,  threw  a  theoretic  glamour  over  them 
which  is  already  fading.  Mr.  Kipling  is, 
in  a  precise  and  rather  startling  sense,  the  ex- 
104 


CHARM    OF    JINGOISM 

ceptlon  that  proves  the  rule.  For  he  has  im- 
agination, of  an  oriental  and  cruel  kind,  but 
he  has  it,  not  because  he  grew  up  in  a  new 
country,  but  precisely  because  he  grew  up  in 
the  oldest  country  upon  earth.  He  is  rooted 
in  a  past — an  Asiatic  past.  He  might  never 
have  written  "Kabul  River"  if  he  had  been 
born  in  Melbourne. 

I  say  frankly,  therefore  (lest  there  should 
be  any  air  of  evasion),  that  Imperialism  in  its 
common  patriotic  pretensions  appears  to  me 
both  weak  and  perilous.  It  is  the  attempt  of 
a  European  country  to  create  a  kind  of  sham 
Europe  which  it  can  dominate,  instead  of  the 
real  Europe,  which  it  can  only  share.  It  is  a 
love  of  living  with  one's  inferiors.  The  notion 
of  restoring  the  Roman  Empire  by  oneself  and 
for  oneself  is  a  dream  that  has  haunted  every 
Christian  nation  in  a  different  shape  and  in 
almost  every  shape  as  a  snare.  The  Spanish 
are  a  consistent  and  conservative  people; 
therefore  they  embodied  that  attempt  at  Em- 
pire in  long  and  lingering  dynasties.  The 
105 


CHARM    OF    JINGOISM 

French  are  a  violent  people,  and  therefore  they 
twice  conquered  that  Empire  by  violence  of 
arms.  The  English  are  above  all  a  poetical 
and  optimistic  people;  and  therefore  their  Em- 
pire is  something  vague  and  yet  sympathetic, 
something  distant  and  yet  dear.  But  this 
dream  of  theirs  of  being  powerful  in  the  utter- 
most places,  though  a  native  weakness,  is  still 
a  weakness  in  them;  much  more  of  a  weakness 
than  gold  was  to  Spain  or  glory  to  Napoleon. 
If  ever  we  were  in  collision  with  our  real  brothers 
and  rivals  we  should  leave  all  this  fancy  out  of 
account.  We  should  no  more  dream  of  pitting 
Australian  armies  against  German  than  of  pit- 
ting Tasmanian  sculpture  against  French.  I 
have  thus  explained,  lest  anyone  should  accuse 
me  of  concealing  an  unpopular  attitude,  why 
I  do  not  believe  in  Imperialism  as  commonly  un- 
derstood. I  think  it  not  merely  an  occasional 
wrong  to  other  peoples,  but  a  continuous  feeble- 
ness, a  running  sore,  in  my  own.  But  it  is 
also  true  that  I  have  dwelt  on  this  Imperialism 
that  is  an  amiable  delusion  partly  in  order  to 
106 


CHARM     OF     JINGOISM 

show  how  different  it  is  from  the  deeper,  more 
sinister  and  yet  more  persuasive  thing  that  I 
have  been  forced  to  call  Imperialism  for  the 
convenience  of  this  chapter.  In  order  to  get 
to  the  root  of  this  evil  and  quite  un-English 
Imperialism  we  must  cast  back  and  begin  anew 
with  a  more  general  discussion  of  the  first  needs 
of  human  intercourse. 


107 


II 

WISDOM    AND    THE    WEATHER 

IT  is  admitted,  one  may  hope,  that  common 
things  are  never  commonplace.  Birth  is  cov- 
ered with  curtajns  precisely  because  it  is  a 
staggering  and  monstrous  prodigy.  Death 
and  first  love,  though  they  happen  to  every- 
body, can  stop  one's  heart  with  the  very 
thought  of  them.  But  while  this  is  granted, 
something  further  may  be  claimed.  It  is  not 
merely  true  that  these  universal  things  are 
strange;  it  is  moreover  true  that  they  are  sub- 
tle. In  the  last  analysis  most  common  things 
will  be  found  to  be  highly  complicated.  Some 
men  of  science  do  indeed  get  over  the  difficulty 
by  dealing  only  with  the  easy  part  of  it :  thus, 
they  will  call  first  love  the  instinct  of  sex,  and 
the  awe  of  death  the  instinct  of  self-preserva- 
tion. But  this  is  only  getting  over  the  difficulty 
of  describing  peacock  green  by  calling  it  blue. 
There  is  blue  in  it.  That  there  is  a  strong 
108 


WISDOM  AND  THE  WEATHER 

physical  element  in  both  romance  and  the  Me- 
mento Mori  makes  them  if  possible  more,  baffling 
than  if  they  had  been  wholly  intellectual.  No 
man  could  say  exactly  how  much  his  sexuality 
was  colored  by  a  clean  love  of  beauty,  or  by 
the  mere  boyish  itch  for  irrevocable  adventures, 
like  running  away  to  sea.  No  man  could  say 
how  far  his  animal  dread  of  the  end  was  mixed 
up  with  mystical  traditions  touching  morals 
and  religion.  It  is  exactly  because  these  things 
are  animal,  but  not  quite  animal,  that  the  dance 
of  all  the  difficulties  begins.  The  materialists 
analyze  the  easy  part,  deny  the  hard  part  and 
go  home  to  their  tea. 

It  is  complete  error  to  suppose  that  because 
a  thing  is  vulgar  therefore  it  is  not  refined; 
that  is,  subtle  and  hard  to  define.  A  drawing- 
room  song  of  my  youth  which  began  "  In  the 
gloaming,  O,  my  darling,"  was  vulgar  enough 
as  a  song;  but  the  connection  between  human 
passion  and  the  twilight  is  none  the  less  an 
exquisite  and  even  inscrutable  thing.  Or  to 
take  another  obvious  instance:  the  jokes  about 
109 


WISDOM  AND   THE   WEATHER 

a  mother-in-law  are  scarcely  delicate,  but  the 
problem  of  a  mother-in-law  is  extremely  deli- 
cate. A  mother-in-law  is  subtle  because  she 
is  a  thing  like  the  twilight.  She  is  a  mystical 
blend  of  two  inconsistent  things — law  and  a 
mother.  The  caricatures  misrepresent  her; 
but  they  arise  out  of  a  real  human  enigma. 
"  Comic  Cuts  "  deals  with  the  difficulty  wrongly, 
but  it  would  need  George  Meredith  at  his  best 
to  deal  with  the  difficulty  rightly.  The  nearest 
statement  of  the  problem  perhaps  is  this:  it  is 
not  that  a  mother-in-law  must  be  nasty,  but 
that  she  must  be  very  nice. 

But  it  is  best  perhaps  to  take  in  illustration 
some  daily  custom  we  have  all  heard  despised 
as  vulgar  or  trite.  Take,  for  the  sake  of  argu- 
ment, the  custom  of  talking  about  the  weather. 
Stevenson  calls  it  "  the  very  nadir  and  scoff  of 
good  conversationalists."  Now  there  are  very 
deep  reasons  for  talking  about  the  weather, 
reasons  that  are  delicate  as  well  as  deep ;  they 
lie  in  layer  upon  layer  of  stratified  sagacity. 
First  of  all  it  is  a  gesture  of  primeval  worship. 
110 


WISDOM  AND  THE  WEATHER 

The  sky  must  be  invoked;  and  to  begin  every- 
thing with  the  weather  is  a  sort  of  pagan  way 
of  beginning  everything  with  prayer.  Jonea 
and  Brown  talk  about  the  weather:  but  so  do 
Milton  and  Shelley.  Then  it  is  an  expression 
of  that  elementary  idea  in  politeness — equality. 
For  the  very  word  politeness  is  only  the  Greek 
for  citizenship.  The  word  politeness  is  akin  to 
the  word  policeman;  a  charming  thought.. 
Properly  understood,  the  citizen  should  be  more 
polite  than  the  gentleman ;  perhaps  the  police- 
man should  be  the  most  courtly  and  elegant  of 
the  three.  But  all  good  manners  must  obvi- 
ously begin  with  the  sharing  of  something  in  a 
simple  style.  Two  men  should  share  an  um- 
brella; if  they  have  not  got  an  umbrella,  they 
should  at  least  share  the  rain,  with  all  its  rich 
potentialities  of  wit  and  philosophy.  "  For  He 
maketh  His  sun  to  shine  .  .  ."  This  is  the 
second  element  in  the  weather;  its  recognition 
of  human  equality  in  that  we  all  have  our  hats 
under  the  dark  blue  spangled  umbrella  of  the 
universe.  Arising  out  of  this  is  the  third 
111 


WISDOM  AND   THE  WEATHER 

wholesome  strain  in  the  custom ;  I  mean  that  it 
begins  with  the  body  and  with  our  inevitable 
bodily  brotherhood.  All  true  friendliness  begins 
with  fire  and  food  and  drink  and  the  recogni- 
tion of  rain  or  frost.  Those  who  will  not  begin 
at  the  bodily  end  of  things  are  already  prigs 
and  may  soon  be  Christian  Scientists.  Each 
human  soul  has  in  a  sense  to  enact  for  itself 
the  gigantic  humility  of  the  Incarnation.  Every 
man  must  descend  into  the  flesh  to  meet  man- 
kind. 

Briefly,  in  the  mere  observation  "  a  fine  day  " 
there  is  the  whole  great  human  idea  of  comrade- 
ship. Now,  pure  comradeship  is  another  of 
those  broad  and  yet  bewildering  things.  We 
all  enjoy  it;  yet  when  we  come  to  talk  about 
it  we  almost  always  talk  nonsense,  chiefly  be- 
cause we  suppose  it  to  be  a  simpler  affair  than 
it  is.  It  is  simple  to  conduct ;  but  it  is  by  no 
means  simple  to  analyze.  Comradeship  is  at 
the  most  only  one  half  of  human  life ;  the  other 
half  is  Love,  a  thing  so  different  that  one  might 
fancy  it  had  been  made  for  another  universe. 


WISDOM  AND  THE  WEATHER 

And  I  do  not  mean  mere  sex  love ;  any  kind  of 
concentrated  passion,  maternal  love,  or  even  the 
fiercer  kinds  of  friendship  are  in  their  nature 
alien  to  pure  comradeship.  Both  sides  are  es- 
sential to  life ;  and  both  are  known  in  differing- 
degrees  to  everybody  of  every  age  or  sex.  But 
very  broadly  speaking  it  may  still  be  said  that 
women  stand  for  the  dignity  of  love  and  men 
for  the  dignity  of  comradeship.  I  mean  that 
the  institution  would  hardly  be  expected  if  the 
males  of  the  tribe  did  not  mount  guard  over  it. 
The  affections  in  which  women  excel  have  so 
much  more  authority  and  intensity  that  pure 
comradeship  would  be  washed  away  if  it  were 
not  rallied  and  guarded  in  clubs,  corps,  col- 
leges, banquets  and  regiments.  Most  of  us 
have  heard  the  voice  in  which  the  hostess  tells 
her  husband  not  to  sit  too  long  over  the  cigars. 
It  is  the  dreadful  voice  of  Love,  seeking  to  de- 
stroy Comradeship. 

All  true  comradeship  has  in  it  those  three 
elements  which  I  have  remarked  in  the  ordinary 
exclamation  about  the  weather.     First,  it  has 
113 


WISDOM  AND  THE  WEATHER 

a  sort  of  broad  philosophy  like  the  common  sky, 
emphasizing  that  we  are  all  under  the  same 
cosmic  conditions.  We  are  all  in  the  same  boat, 
the  "  winged  rock "  of  Mr.  Herbert  Trench. 
Secondly,  it  recognizes  this  bond  as  the  essen- 
tial one;  for  comradeship  is  simply  humanity 
seen  in  that  one  aspect  in  which  men  are  really 
equal.  The  old  writers  were  entirely  wise  when 
they  talked  of  the  equality  of  men;  but  they 
were  also  very  wise  in  not  mentioning  women. 
Women  are  always  authoritarian ;  they  are  al- 
ways above  or  below;  that  is  why  marriage  is 
a  sort  of  poetical  see-saw.  There  are  only  three 
things  in  the  world  that  women  do  not  under- 
stand; and  they  are  Liberty,  Equality,  and 
Fraternity.  But  men  (a  class  little  understood 
in  the  modern  world)  find  these  things  the  breath 
of  their  nostrils  ;  and  our  most  learned  ladies  will 
not  even  begin  to  understand  them  until  they 
make  allowance  for  this  kind  of  cool  camarade- 
rie. Lastly,  it  contains  the  third  quality  of  the 
weather,  the  insistence  upon  the  body  and  its 
^dispensable  satisfaction.  No  one  has  even 
114 


.WISDOM  AND  THE  WEATHER 

begun  to  understand  comradeship  who  does  not 
accept  with  it  a  certain  hearty  eagerness  in 
eating,  drinking,  or  smoking,  an  uproarious 
materialism  which  to  many  women  appears  only 
hoggish.  You  may  call  the  thing  an  orgy  or 
a  sacrament ;  it  is  certainly  an  essential.  It  is 
at  root  a  resistance  to  the  superciliousness  of 
the  individual.  Nay,  its  very  swaggering  and 
howling  are  humble.  In  the  heart  of  its  rowdi- 
ness  there  is  a  sort  of  mad  modesty ;  a  desire  to 
melt  the  separate  soul  into  the  mass  of  unpre- 
tentious masculinity.  It  is  a  clamorous  con- 
fession of  the  weakness  of  all  flesh.  No  man 
must  be  superior  to  the  things  that  are  common 
to  men.  This  sort  of  equality  must  be  bodily 
and  gross  and  comic.  Not  only  are  we  all  in 
the  same  boat,  but  we  are  all  seasick. 

The  word  comradeship  just  now  promises  to 
become  as  fatuous  as  the  word  "  affinity." 
There  are  clubs  of  a  Socialist  sort  where  all 
the  members,  men  and  women,  call  each  other 
"  Comrade."  I  have  no  serious  emotions,  hos- 
tile or  otherwise,  about  this  particular  habit:  at 
115 


WISDOM  AND  THE  WEATHER 

the  worst  it  is  conventionality,  and  at  the  best 
flirtation.  I  am  convinced  here  only  to  point 
out  a  rational  principle.  If  you  choose  to  lump 
all  flowers  together,  lilies  and  dahlias  and  tu- 
lips and  chrysanthemums  and  call  them  all 
idaisies,  you  will  find  that  you  have  spoiled  the 
very  fine  word  daisy.  If  you  choose  to  call 
every  human  attachment  comradeship,  if  you 
include  under  that  name  the  respect  of  a  youth 
for  a  venerable  prophetess,  the  interest  of  a 
man  in  a  beautiful  woman  who  baffles  him,  the 
pleasure  of  a  philosophical  old  fogy  in  a  girl 
who  is  impudent  and  innocent,  the  end  of  the 
meanest  quarrel  or  the  beginning  of  the  most 
mountainous  love;  if  you  are  going  to  call  all 
these  comradeship,  you  will  gain  nothing;  you 
will  only  lose  a  word.  Daisies  are  obvious  and 
universal  and  open ;  but  they  are  only  one  kind 
of  flower.  Comradeship  is  obvious  and  univer- 
sal and  open ;  but  it  is  only  one  kind  of  affec- 
tion ;  it  has  characteristics  that  would  destroy 
any  other  kind.  Anyone  who  has  known  true 
comradeship  in  a  club  or  in  a  regiment,  knows 
116 


WISDOM  AND  THE  WEATHER 

that  it  is  impersonal.  There  is  a  pedantic 
phrase  used  in  debating  clubs  which  is  strictly 
true  to  the  masculine  emotion ;  they  call  it 
"  speaking  to  the  question."  Women  speak  to 
each  other;  men  speak  to  the  subject  they  are 
speaking  about.  Many  an  honest  man  has  sat 
in  a  ring  of  his  five  best  friends  under  heaven 
and  forgotten  who  was  in  the  room  while  he 
explained  some  system.  This  is  not  peculiar  to 
intellectual  men ;  men  are  all  theoretical,  whether 
they  are  talking  about  God  or  about  golf.  Men 
are  all  impersonal;  that  is  to  say,  republican. 
No  one  remembers  after  a  really  good  talk  who 
has  said  the  good  things.  Every  man  speaks 
to  a  visionary  multitude ;  a  mystical  cloud,  that 
is  called  the  club'. 

It  is  obvious  that  this  cool  and  careless  qual- 
ity which  is  essential  to  the  collective  affection 
of  males  involves  disadvantages  and  dangers. 
It  leads  to  spitting;  it  leads  to  coarse  speech; 
it  must  lead  to  these  things  so  long  as  it  is 
honorable ;  comradeship  must  be  in  some  degree 
ugly.  The  moment  beauty  is  mentioned  in  male 

117 


WISDOM   AND  THE  WEATHER 

friendship,  the  nostrils  are  stopped  with  the 
smfll  of  abominable  things.  Friendship  must 
be  physically  dirty  if  it  is  to  be  morally  clean. 
It  must  be  in  its  shirt  sleeves.  The  chaos  of 
habits  that  always  goes  with  males  when  left 
entirely  to  themselves  has  only  one  honorable 
cure ;  and  that  is  the  strict  discipline  of  a  mon- 
astery. Anyone  who  has  seen  our  unhappy 
young  idealists  in  East  End  Settlements  losing 
their  collars  in  the  wash  and  living  on  tinned 
salmon  will  fully  understand  why  it  was  decided 
by  the  wisdom  of  St.  Bernard  or  St.  Benedict, 
that  if  men  were  to  live  without  women,  they 
must  not  live  without  rules.  Something  of  the 
same  sort  of  artificial  exactitude,  of  course,  is 
obtained  in  an  army;  and  an  army  also  has  to 
be  in  many  ways  monastic;  only  that  it  has 
celibacy  without  chastity.  But  these  things  do 
not  apply  to  normal  married  men.  These  have 
a  quite  sufficient  restraint  on  their  instinctive 
anarchy  in  the  savage  common-sense  of  the 
other  sex.  There  is  only  one  very  timid  sort 
of  man  that  is  not  afraid  of  women. 
118 


Ill 

THE    COMMON    VISION 

Now  this  masculine  love  of  an  open  and  level 
camaraderie  is  the  life  within  all  democracies 
and  attempts  to  govern  by  debate ;  without 
it  the  republic  would  be  a  dead  formula.  Even 
as  it  is,  of  course,  the  spirit  of  democracy  fre- 
quently differs  widely  from  the  letter,  and  a 
pothouse  is  often  a  better  test  than  a  Parlia- 
ment. Democracy  in  its  human  sense  is  not 
arbitrament  by  the  majority;  it  is  not  even 
arbitrament  by  everybody.  It  can  be  more 
nearly  defined  as  arbitrament  by  anybody.  I 
mean  that  it  rests  on  that  club  habit  of  taking 
a  total  stranger  for  granted,  of  assuming  cer- 
tain things  to  be  inevitably  common  to  your- 
self and  him.  Only  the  things  that  anybody 
may  be  presumed  to  hold  have  the  full  author- 
ity of  democracy.  Look  out  of  the  window 
and  notice  the  first  man  who  walks  by.  The 
119 


THE     COMMON     VISION 

Liberals  may  have  swept  England  with  an  over- 
whelming majority;  but  you  would  not  stake  a 
button  that  the  man  is  a  Liberal.  The  Bible 
may  be  read  in  all  schools  and  respected  in  all 
law  courts ;  but  you  would  not  bet  a  straw  that 
he  believes  in  the  Bible.  But  you  would  bet 
your  week's  wages,  let  us  say,  that  he  believes 
in  wearing  clothes.  You  would  bet  that  he  be- 
lieves that  physical  courage  is  a  fine  thing,  or 
that  parents  have  authority  over  children.  Of 
course,  he  might  be  the  millionth  man  who  does 
not  believe  these  things ;  if  it  comes  to  that, 
he  might  be  the  Bearded  Lady  dressed  up  as  a 
man.  But  these  prodigies  are  quite  a  different 
thing  from  any  mere  calculation  of  numbers. 
People  who  hold  these  views  are  not  a  minority, 
but  a  monstrosity.  But  of  these  universal 
dogmas  that  have  full  democratic  authority 
the  only  test  is  this  test  of  anybody.  What 
you  would  observe  before  any  newcomer  in  a 
tavern — that  is  the  real  English  law.  The  first 
man  you  see  from  the  window,  he  is  the  King 
of  England. 

120 


THE     COMMON     VISION 

The  decay  of  taverns,  which  is  but  a  part  of 
the  general  decay  of  democracy,  has  undoubt- 
edly weakened  this  masculine  spirit  of  equality. 
I  remember  that  a  roomful  of  Socialists  liter- 
ally laughed  when  I  told  them  that  there  were 
no  two  nobler  words  in  all  poetry  than  Public 
House.  They  thought  it  was  a  joke.  Why 
they  should  think  it  a  joke,  since  they  want  to 
make  all  houses  public  houses,  I  cannot  imag- 
ine. But  if  anyone  wishes  to  see  the  real  rowdy 
egalitarianism  which  is  necessary  (to  males,  at 
least)  he  can  find  it  as  well  as  anywhere  in 
the  great  old  tavern  disputes  which  come  down 
to  us  in  such  books  as  Boswell's  Johnson.  It 
is  worth  while  to  mention  that  one  name  espe- 
cially because  the  modern  world  in  its  morbidity 
has  done  it  a  strange  injustice.  The  demeanor 
of  Johnson,  it  is  said,  was  "  harsh  and  despotic." 
It  was  occasionally  harsh,  but  it  was  never 
despotic.  Johnson  was  not  in  the  least  a  des- 
pot; Johnson  was  a  demagogue,  he  shouted 
against  a  shouting  crowd.  The  very  fact  that 
he  wrangled  with  other  people  is  proof  that 
121 


THE     COMMON    VISION 

other  people  were  allowed  to  wrangle  with 
him.  His  very  brutality  was  based  on  the  idea 
of  an  equal  scrimmage,  like  that  of  football. 
It  is  strictly  true  that  he  bawled  and  banged 
the  table  because  he  was  a  modest  man.  He 
was  honestly  afraid  of  being  overwhelmed  or 
even  overlooked.  Addison  had  exquisite  man- 
ners and  was  the  king  of  his  company ;  he  was 
polite  to  everybody;  but  superior  to  every- 
body; therefore  he  has  been  handed  down  for- 
ever in  the  immortal  insult  of  Pope — 

"  Like  Cato,  give  his  little  Senate  laws 
And  sit  attentive  to  his  own  applause." 

Johnson,  so  far  from  being  king  of  his  com- 
pany, was  a  sort  of  Irish  Member  in  his  own 
Parliament.  Addison  was  a  courteous  superior 
and  was  hated.  Johnson  was  an  insolent  equal 
and  therefore  was  loved  by  all  who  knew  him, 
and  handed  down  in  a  marvelous  book,  which  is 
one  of  the  mere  miracles  of  love. 

This  doctrine  of  equality  is  essential  to  con- 


THE     COMMON     VISION 

versation ;  so  much  may  be  admitted  by  anyone 
who  knows  what  conversation  is.  Once  argu- 
ing at  a  table  in  a  tavern  the  most  famous  man 
on  earth  would  wish  to  be  obscure,  so  that  his 
brilliant  remarks  might  blaze  like  stars  on  the 
background  of  his  obscurity.  To  anything 
worth  calling  a  man  nothing  can  be  conceived 
more  cold  or  cheerless  than  to  be  king  of  your 
company.  But  it  may  be  said  that  in  mascu- 
line sports  and  games,  other  than  the  great 
game  of  debate,  there  is  definite  emulation  and 
eclipse.  There  is  indeed  emulation,  but  this  is 
only  an  ardent  sort  of  equality.  Games  are 
competitive,  because  that  is  the  only  way  of 
making  them  exciting.  But  if  anyone  doubts 
that  men  must  forever  return  to  the  ideal  of 
equality,  it  is  only  necessary  to  answer  that 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  handicap.  If  men 
exulted  in  mere  superiority,  they  would  seek 
to  see  how  far  such  superiority  could  go ;  they 
would  be  glad  when  one  strong  runner  came 
in  miles  ahead  of  all  the  rest.  But  what  men 
like  is  not  the  triumph  of  superiors,  but  the 
123 


THE     COMMON    VISION 

struggle  of  equals ;  and,  therefore,  they  intro- 
duce even  into  their  competitive  sports  an  arti- 
ficial equality.  It  is  sad  to  think  how  few  of 
those  who  arrange  our  sporting  handicaps  can 
be  supposed  with  any  probability  to  realize  that 
they  are  abstract  and  even  severe  republicans. 
No;  the  real  objection  to  equality  and  self- 
rule  has  nothing  to  do  with  any  of  these  free 
and  festive  aspects  of  mankind;  all  men  are 
democrats  when  they  are  happy.  The  philo- 
sophic opponent  of  democracy  would  substan- 
tially sum  up  his  position  by  saying  that  it 
"  will  not  work."  Before  going  further,  I 
will  register  in  passing  a  protest  against  the 
assumption  that  working  is  the  one  test  of 
humanity.  Heaven  does  not  work;  it  plays. 
Men  are  most  themselves  when  they  are  free ; 
and  if  I  find  that  men  are  snobs  in  their  work 
but  democrats  on  their  holidays,  I  shall  take 
the  liberty  to  believe  their  holidays.  But  it 
is  this  question  of  work  which  really  perplexes 
the  question  of  equality;  and  it  is  with  that 
that  we  must  now  deal.  Perhaps  the  truth 


THE     COMMON    VISION 

can  be  put  most  pointedly  thus :  that  democracy 
has  one  real  enemy,  and  that  is  civilization. 
Those  utilitarian  miracles  which  science  has 
made  are  anti-democratic,  not  so  much  in  their 
perversion,  or  even  in  their  practical  result,  as 
in  their  primary  shape  and  purpose.  The 
Frame-Breaking  Rioters  were  right;  not  per- 
haps in  thinking  that  machines  would  make 
fewer  men  workmen;  but  certainly  in  thinking 
that  machines  would  make  fewer  men  masters. 
More  wheels  do  mean  fewer  handles  ;  fewer  han- 
dles do  mean  fewer  hands.  The  machinery  of 
science  must  be  individualistic  and  isolated.  A 
mob  can  shout  round  a  palace ;  but  a  mob  can- 
not shout  down  a  telephone.  The  specialist 
appears  and  democracy  is  half  spoiled  at  a 
stroke. 


125 


IV 

THE    INSANE     NECESSITY 

THE  common  conception  among  the  dregs  of 
Darwinian  culture  is  that  men  have  slowly 
worked  their  way  out  of  inequality  into  a  state 
of  comparative  equality.  The  truth  is,  I 
fancy,  almost  exactly  the  opposite.  All  men 
have  normally  and  naturally  begun  with  the 
idea  of  equality;  they  have  only  abandoned  it 
late  and  reluctantly,  and  always  for  some  mate- 
rial reason  of  detail.  They  have  never  natu- 
rally felt  that  one  class  of  men  was  superior 
to  another;  they  have  always  been  driven  to 
assume  it  through  certain  practical  limitations 
of  space  and  time. 

For  example,  there  is  one  element  which  must 
always  tend  to  oligarchy — or  rather  to  despot- 
ism; I  mean  the  element  of  hurry.  If  the 
house  has  caught  fire  a  man  must  ring  up  the 
fire  engines ;  a  committee  cannot  ring  them  up. 
126 


THE     INSANE     NECESSITY 

If  a  camp  is  surprised  by  night  somebody  must 
give  the  order  to  fire;  there  is  no  time  to  vote 
it.  It  is  solely  a  question  of  the  physical  limi- 
tations of  time  and  space;  not  at  all  of  any 
mental  limitations  in  the  mass  of  men  com- 
manded. If  all  the  people  in  the  house  were 
men  of  destiny  it  would  still  be  better  that 
they  should  not  all  talk  into  the  telephone  at 
once;  nay,  it  would  be  better  that  the  silliest 
man  of  all  should  speak  uninterrupted.  If  an 
army  actually  consisted  of  nothing  but  Hani- 
bals  and  Napoleons,  it  would  still  be  better  in 
the  case  of  a  surprise  that  they  should  not  all 
give  orders  together.  Nay,  it  would  be  better 
if  the  stupidest  of  them  all  gave  the  orders. 
Thus,  we  see  that  merely  military  subordina- 
tion, so  far  from  resting  on  the  inequality  of 
men,  actually  rests  on  the  equality  of  men. 
Discipline  does  not  involve  the  Carlylean  notion 
that  somebody  is  always  right  when  everybody 
is  wrong,  and  that  we  must  discover  and  crown 
that  somebody.  On  the  contrary,  discipline 
means  that  in  certain  frightfully  rapid  cir-« 
127 


THE     INSANE     NECESSITY 

curastances,  one  can  trust  anybody  so  long  as 
he  is  not  everybody.  The  military  spirit  does 
Hot  mean  (as  Carlyle  fancied)  obeying  the 
strongest  and  wisest  man.  On  the  contrary, 
the  military  spirit  means,  if  anything,  obeying 
the  weakest  and  stupidest  man,  obeying  him 
merely  because  he  is  a  man,  and  not  a  thousand 
men.  Submission  to  a  weak  man  is  discipline. 
Submission  to  a  strong  man  is  only  servility. 

Now  it  can  be  easily  shown  that  the  thing 
we  call  aristocracy  in  Europe  is  not  in  its  ori- 
gin and  spirit  an  aristocracy  at  all.  It  is  not 
a  system  of  spiritual  degrees  and  distinctions 
like,  for  example,  the  caste  system  of  India, 
or  even  like  the  old  Greek  distinction  between 
free-men  and  slaves.  It  is  simply  the  remains 
of  a  military  organization,  framed  partly  to 
sustain  the  sinking  Roman  Empire,  partly  to 
break  and  avenge  the  awful  onslaught  of  Islam. 
The  word  Duke  simply  means  Colonel,  just  as 
the  word  Emperor  simply  means  Commander- 
in-Chief.  The  whole  story  is  told  in  the  single 
title  of  Counts  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire, 
128 


THE     INSANE     NECESSITY 

which  merely  means  officers  in  the  European 
army  against  the  contemporary  Yellow  Peril. 
Now  in  an  army  nobody  ever  dreams  of  sup- 
posing that  difference  of  rank  represents  a 
difference  of  moral  reality.  Nobody  ever  says 
about  a  regiment,  "Your  Major  is  very  hu- 
morous and  energetic;  your  Colonel,  of  course, 
must  be  even  more  humorous  and  yet  more 
energetic."  No  one  ever  says,  in  reporting  a 
mess-room  conversation,  "  Lieutenant  Jones 
was  very  witty,  but  was  naturally  inferior  to 
Captain  Smith."  The  essence  of  an  army  is 
the  idea  of  official  inequality,  founded  on  un- 
official equality.  The  Colonel  is  not  obeyed 
because  he  is  the  best  man,  but  because  he  is 
the  Colonel.  Such  was  probably  the  spirit  of 
the  system  of  dukes  and  counts  when  it  first 
arose  out  of  the  military  spirit  and  military 
necessities  of  Rome.  With  the  decline  of  those 
necessities  it  has  gradually  ceased  to  have  mean- 
ing as  a  military  organization,  and  become 
honeycombed  with  unclean  plutocracy.  Even 
now  it  is  not  a  spiritual  aristocracy — it  is  not 
129 


THE     INSANE     NECESSITY 

so  bad  as  all  that.     It  is  simply  an  army  with- 
out an  enemy — billeted  upon  the  people. 

Man,  therefore,  has  a  specialist  as  well  as 
comrade-like  aspect;  and  the  case  of  militar- 
ism is  not  the  only  case  of  such  specialist  sub- 
mission. The  tinker  and  tailor,  as  well  as  the 
soldier  and  sailor,  require  a  certain  rigidity  of 
rapidity  of  action :  at  least,  if  the  tinker  is  not 
organized  that  is  largely  why  he  does  not  tink 
on  any  large  scale.  The  tinker  and  tailor  often 
represent  the  two  nomadic  races  in  Europe: 
the  Gipsy  and  the  Jew ;  but  the  Jew  alone  has 
influence  because  he  alone  accepts  some  sort  of 
discipline.  Man,  we  say,  has  two  sides,  the 
specialist  side  where  he  must  have  subordina- 
tion, and  the  social  side  where  he  must  have 
equality.  There  is  a  truth  in  the  saying  that 
ten  tailors  go  to  make  a  man;  but  we  must 
remember  also  that  ten  Poets  Laureate  or  ten 
Astronomers  Royal  go  to  make  a  man,  too. 
Ten  million  tradesmen  go  to  make  Man  him- 
self; but  humanity  consists  of  tradesmen  when 
they  are  not  talking  shop.  Now  the  peculiar 
130 


THE     INSANE     NECESSITY 

peril  of  our  time,  which  I  call  for  argument's 
sake  Imperialism  or  Csesarism,  is  the  complete 
eclipse  of  comradeship  and  equality  by  special- 
ism and  domination. 

There  are  only  two  kinds  of  social  structure 
conceivable — personal  government  and  imper- 
sonal government.  If  my  anarchic  friends  will 
not  have  rules — they  will  have  rulers.  Prefer- 
ring personal  government,  with  its  tact  and 
flexibility,  is  called  Royalism.  Preferring  im- 
personal government,  with  its  dogmas  and  defi- 
nitions, is  called  Republicanism.  Objecting 
broadmindedly  both  to  kings  and  creeds  is 
called  Bosh ;  at  least,  I  know  no  more  philo- 
sophic word  for  it.  You  can  be  guided  by  the 
shrewdness  or  presence  of  mind  of  one  ruler, 
or  by  the  equality  and  ascertained  justice  of 
one  rule;  but  you  must  have  one  or  the  other, 
or  you  are  not  a  nation,  but  a  nasty  mess. 
Now  men  in  their  aspect  of  equality  and  de- 
bate adore  the  idea  of  rules ;  they  develop  and 
complicate  them  greatly  to  excess.  A  man 
finds  far  more  regulations  and  definitions  in 


THE     INSANE     NECESSITY 

his  club,  "where  there  are  rules,  than  in  his  homes 
where  there  is  a  ruler.  A  deliberative  assem- 
bly, the  House  of  Commons,  for  instance,  car- 
ries this  mummery  to  the  point  of  a  methodical 
madness.  The  whole  system  is  stiff  with  rigid 
unreason ;  like  the  Royal  Court  in  Lewis  Car- 
roll. You  would  think  the  Speaker  would 
speak;  therefore  he  is  mostly  silent.  You 
would  think  a  man  would  take  off  his  hat  to 
stop  and  put  it  on  to  go  away;  therefore  he 
takes  off  his  hat  to  walk  out  and  puts  it  on 
to  stop  in.  Names  are  forbidden,  and  a  man 
must  call  his  own  father  "my  right  honorable 
friend  the  member  for  West  Birmingham." 
These  are,  perhaps,  fantasies  of  decay:  but 
fundamentally  they  answer  a  masculine  appe- 
tite. Men  feel  that  rules,  even  if  irrational, 
are  universal ;  men  feel  that  law  is  equal,  even 
when  it  is  not  equitable.  There  is  a  wild  fair- 
ness in  the  thing — as  there  is  in  tossing  up. 

Again,  it  is  gravely  unfortunate  that  when 
critics  do  attack  sueh  cases  as  the  Commons  it 
is    always    on    the    points    (perhaps    the    few 
132 


THE     INSANE     NECESSITY 

points)  where  the  Commons  are  right.  They 
denounce  the  House  as  the  Talking-Shop,  and 
complain  that  it  wastes  time  in  wordy  mazes. 
Now  this  is  just  one  respect  in  which  the  Com- 
mons are  actually  like  the  Common  People. 
If  they  love  leisure  and  long  debate,  it  is  be- 
cause all  men  love  it ;  that  they  really  represent 
England.  There  the  Parliament  does  approach 
to  the  virile  virtues  of  the  pothouse. 

The  real  truth  is  that  adumbrated  in  the 
introductory  section,  when  we  spoke  of  the 
sense  of  home  and  property,  as  now  we  speak 
of  the  sense  of  counsel  and  community.  All 
men  do  naturally  love  the  idea  of  leisure,  laugh- 
ter, loud  and  equal  argument ;  but  there  stands 
a  specter  in  our  hall.  We  are  conscious  of  the 
towering  modern  challenge  that  is  called  spe- 
cialism or  cut-throat  competition — 'Business. 
Business  will  have  nothing  to  do  with  leisure: 
business  will  have  no  truck  with  comradeship; 
business  will  pretend  to  no  patience  with  all 
the  legal  fictions  and  fantastic  handicaps  by 
which  comradeship  protects  its  egalitarian 
133 


THE     INSANE     NECESSITY 

ideal.  The  modern  millionaire,  when  engaged 
in  the  agreeable  and  typical  task  of  sacking 
his  own  father,  will  certainly  not  refer  to  him  as 
the  right  honorable  clerk  from  the  Laburnum 
Road,  Brixton.  Therefore  there  has  arisen 
in  modern  life  a  literary  fashion  devoting  itself 
to  the  romance  of  business,  to  great  demigods 
of  greed  and  to  fairyland  of  finance.  This 
popular  philosophy  is  utterly  despotic  and 
anti-democratic;  this  fashion  is  the  flower  of 
that  Caesarism  against  which  I  am  concerned  to 
protest.  The  ideal  millionaire  is  strong  in  the 
possession  of  a  brain  of  steel.  The  fact  that 
the  real  millionaire  is  rather  more  often  strong 
in  the  possession  of  a  head  of  wood,  does  not 
alter  the  spirit  and  trend  of  the  idolatry.  The 
essential  argument  is  "  Specialists  must  be  des- 
pots ;  men  must  be  specialists.  You  cannot 
have  equality  in  a  soap  factory ;  so  you  cannot 
have  it  anywhere.  You  cannot  have  comrade- 
ship in  a  wheat  corner ;  so  you  cannot  have  it  at 
all.  We  must  have  commercial  civilization ; 
therefore  we  must  destroy  democracy."  I  know 


THE     INSANE    NECESSITY 

that  plutocrats  have  seldom  sufficient  fancy  to 
soar  to  such  examples  as  soap  or  wheat.  They 
generally  confine  themselves,  with  fine  freshness 
of  mind,  to  a  comparison  between  the  state  and 
a  ship.  One  anti-democratic  writer  remarked 
that  he  would  not  like  to  sail  in  a  vessel  in  which 
the  cabin-boy  had  an  equal  vote  with  the  cap- 
tain. It  might  easily  be  urged  in  answer  that 
many  a  ship  (the  Victoria,  for  instance)  was 
sunk  because  an  admiral  gave  an  order  which 
a  cabin-boy  could  see  was  wrong.  But  this 
is  a  debating  reply;  the  essential  fallacy  is 
both  deeper  and  simpler.  The  elementary  fact 
is  that  we  were  all  born  in  a  state;  we  were 
not  all  born  on  a  ship;  like  some  of  our  great 
British  bankers.  A  ship  still  remains  a  spe- 
cialist experiment,  like  a  diving-bell  or  a  flying 
ship:  in  such  peculiar  perils  the  need  for 
promptitude  constitutes  the  need  for  autocracy. 
But  we  live  and  die  in  the  vessel  of  the  state; 
and  if  we  cannot  find  freedom,  camaraderie 
and  the  popular  element  in  the  state,  we  can- 
not find  it  at  all.  And  the  modern  doctrine  of 
135 


THE     INSANE    NECESSITY 

commercial  despotism  means  that  we  shall  not 
find  it  at  all.  Our  specialist  trades  in  their 
highly  civilized  state  cannot  (it  says)  be  run 
without  the  whole  brutal  business  of  bossing 
and  sacking,  "  too  old  at  forty  *'  and  all  the 
rest  of  the  filth.  And  they;  must  be  run,  and 
therefore  we  call  on  Caesar.  Nobody  but  the 
Superman  could  descend  to  do  such  dirty  work. 
Now  (to  reiterate  my  title)  this  is  what  is 
wrong.  This  is  the  huge  modern  heresy  of 
altering  the  human  soul  to  fit  its  conditions, 
instead  of  altering  human  conditions  to  fit  the 
human  soul.  If  soap-boiling  is  really  incon- 
sistent with  brotherhood,  so  much  the  worst 
for  soap-boiling,  not  for  brotherhood.  If  civ- 
ilization really  cannot  get  on  with  democracy, 
so  much  the  worse  for  civilization,  not  for 
democracy.  Certainly,  it  would  be  far  better 
to  go  back  to  village  communes,  if  they  really 
are  communes.  Certainly,  it  would  be  better 
to  do  without  soap  rather  than  to  do  without 
society.  Certainly,  we  would  sacrifice  all  our 
wires,  wheels,  systems,  specialties,  physical 
136 


THE     INSANE    NECESSITY 

science  and  frenzied  finance  for  one  half-hour 
of  happiness  such  as  has  often  come  to  us  with 
comrades  in  a  common  tavern.  I  do  not  say 
the  sacrifice  will  be  necessary;  I  only  say  it 
will  be  easy. 


137 


PART   III 

FEMINISM,  OR  THE  MISTAKE  ABOUT 
WOMAN 


THE     UNMILITARY     SUFFRAGETTE 

IT  will  be  better  to  adopt  in  this  chapter  the 
same  process  that  appeared  a  piece  of  mental 
justice  in  the  last.  My  general  opinions  on 
the  feminine  question  are  such  as  many  suffra- 
gists would  warmly  approve;  and  it  would  be 
easy  to  state  them  without  any  open  reference 
to  the  current  controversy.  But  just  as  it 
seemed  more  decent  to  say  first  that  I  was  not 
in  favor  of  Imperialism  even  in  its  practical 
and  popular  sense,  so  it  seems  more  decent  to 
say  the  same  of  Female  Suffrage,  in  its  prac- 
tical and  popular  sense.  In  other  words,  it  is 
only  fair  to  state,  however  hurriedly,  the  super- 
ficial objection  to  the  Suffragettes  before  we 
go  on  to  the  really  subtle  questions  behind  the 
Suffrage. 

Well,  to  get  this  honest  but  unpleasant  busi- 
ness over,  the  objection  to  the  Suffragettes  is 
not  that  they  are  Militant  Suffragettes.  On 


THE     SUFFRAGETTE 

the  contrary,  it  is  that  they  are  not  militant 
enough.  A  revolution  is  a  military  thing;  it 
has  all  the  military  virtues ;  one  of  which  is 
that  it  comes  to  an  end.  Two  parties  fight 
with  deadly  weapons,  but  under  certain  rules 
of  arbitrary  honor;  the  party  that  wins  be- 
comes the  government  and  proceeds  to  govern. 
The  aim  of  civil  war,  like  the  aim  of  all  war,  is 
peace.  Now  the  Suffragettes  cannot  raise  civil 
war  in  this  soldierly  and  decisive  sense;  first, 
because  they  are  women ;  and,  secondly,  because 
they  are  very  few  women.  But  they  can  raise 
something  else ;  which  is  altogether  another  pair 
of  shoes.  They  do  not  create  revolution ; 
what  they  do  create  is  anarchy ;  and  the  differ- 
ence between  these  is  not  a  question  of  violence, 
but  a  question  of  fruitfulness  and  finality. 
Revolution  of  its  nature  produces  government ; 
anarchy  only  produces  more  anarchy.  Men 
may  have  what  opinions  they  please  about  the 
beheading  of  King  Charles  or  Kjng  Louis,  but 
they  cannot  deny  that  Bradshaw  and  Crom- 
well ruled,  that  Carnot  and  Napoleon  governed. 


THE     SUFFRAGETTE 

Someone  conquered ;  something  occurred.  You 
can  only  knock  off  the  King's  head  once.  But 
you  can  knock  off  the  King's  hat  any  number 
of  times.  Destruction  is  finite;  obstruction  is 
infinite:  so  long  as  rebellion  takes  the  form  of 
mere  disorder  (instead  of  an  attempt  to  en- 
force a  new  order)  there  is  no  logical  end  to  it ; 
it  can  feed  on  itself  and  renew  itself  forever. 
If  Napoleon  had  not  wanted  to  be  a  Consul, 
but  only  wanted  to  be  a  nuisance,  he  could,  pos- 
sibly, have  prevented  any  government  arising 
successfully  out  of  the  Revolution.  But  such 
a  proceeding  would  not  have  deserved  the  dig- 
nified name  of  rebellion. 

It  is  exactly  this  unmilitant  quality  in  the 
Suffragettes  that  makes  their  superficial  prob- 
lem. The  problem  is  that  their  action  has 
none  of  the  advantages  of  ultimate  violence; 
it  does  not  afford  a  test.  War  is  a  dreadful 
thing;  but  it  does  prove  two  points  sharply 
and  unanswerably — numbers,  and  an  unnatural 
valor.  One  does  discover  the  two  urgent  mat- 
ters ;  how  many  rebels  there  are  alive,  and 
143 


THE    SUFFRAGETTE 

how  many  are  ready  to  be  dead.  But  a  tiny 
minority,  even  an  interested  minority,  may 
maintain  mere  disorder  forever.  There  is  also, 
of  course,  in  the  case  of  these  women,  the  fur- 
ther falsity  that  is  introduced  by  their  sex.  It 
is  false  to  state  the  matter  as  a  mere  brutal 
question  of  strength.  If  his  muscles  give  a 
man  a  vote,  then  his  horse  ought  to  have  two 
votes  and  his  elephant  five  votes.  The  truth 
is  more  subtle  than  that;  it  is  that  bodily  out- 
break is  a  man's  instinctive  weapon,  like  the 
hoofs  to  the  horse  or  the  tusks  to  the  elephant. 
All  riot  is  a  threat  of  war;  but  the  woman  is 
brandishing  a  weapon  she  can  never  use.  There 
are  many  weapons  that  she  could  and  does  use. 
If  (for  example)  all  the  women  nagged  for  a 
vote  they  would  get  it  in  a  month.  But  there 
again,  one  must  remember,  it  would  be  neces- 
sary to  get  all  the  women  to  nag.  And  that 
brings  us  to  the  end  of  the  political  surface  of 
the  matter.  The  working  objection  to  the 
Suffragette  philosophy  is  simply  that  over- 
mastering millions  of  women  do  not  agree  with 


THE     SUFFRAGETTE 

it.  I  am  aware  that  some  maintain  that 
women  ought  to  have  votes  whether  the  major- 
ity wants  them  or  not;  but  this  is  surely  a 
strange  and  childish  case  of  setting  up  formal 
democracy  to  the  destruction  of  actual 
democracy.  What  should  the  mass  of  women 
decide  if  they  do  not  decide  their  general  place 
in  the  State?  These  people  practically  say 
that  females  may  vote  about  everything  except 
about  Female  Suffrage. 

But  having  again  cleared  my  conscience  of 
my  merely  political  and  possibly  unpopular 
opinion,  I  will  again  cast  back  and  try  to  treat 
the  matter  in  a  slower  and  more  sympathetic 
style;  attempt  to  trace  the  real  roots  of 
woman's  position  in  the  western  state,  and  the 
causes  of  our  existing  traditions  or  perhaps 
prejudices  upon  the  point.  And  for  this  pur- 
pose it  is  again  necessary  to  travel  far  from 
the  modern  topic,  the  mere  Suffragette  of  to- 
day, and  to  go  back  to  subjects  which,  though 
much  more  old,  are,  I  think,  considerably  more 
fresh. 

145 


II 

THE    UNIVERSAL    STICK 

CAST  your  eye  round  the  room  in  which  you  sit, 
and  select  some  three  or  four  things  that  have 
been  with  man  almost  since  his  beginning; 
which  at  least  we  hear  of  early  in  the  centuries 
and  often  among  the  tribes.  Let  me  suppose 
that  you  see  a  knife  on  the  table,  a  stick  in  the 
corner,  or  a  fire  on  the  hearth.  About  each 
of  these  you  will  notice  one  specialty ;  that  not 
one  of  them  is  special.  Each  of  these  ances- 
tral things  is  a  universal  thing ;  made  to  supply 
many  different  needs ;  and  while  tottering 
pedants  nose  about  to  find  the  cause  and  origin 
of  some  old  custom,  the  truth  is  that  it  had 
fifty  causes  or  a  hundred  origins.  The  knife 
is  meant  to  cut  wood,  to  cut  cheese,  to  cut  pen- 
cils, to  cut  throats ;  for  a  myriad  ingenious 
or  innocent  human  objects.  The  stick  is  meant 
partly  to  hold  a  man  up,  partly  to  knock  a  man 
146 


THE     UNIVERSAL     STICK 

down ;  partly  to  point  with  like  a  finger-post, 
partly  to  balance  with  like  a  balancing  pole, 
partly  to  trifle  with  like  a  cigarette,  partly  to 
kill  with  like  a  club  of  a  giant ;  it  is  a  crutch 
and  a  cudgel ;  an  elongated  finger  and  an  extra 
leg.  The  case  is  the  same,  of  course,  with  the 
fire ;  about  which  the  strangest  modern  views 
have  arisen.  A  queer  fancy  seems  to  be  current 
that  a  fire  exists  to  warm  people.  It  exists  to 
warm  people,  to  light  their  darkness,  to  raise 
their  spirits,  to  toast  their  muffins,  to  air  their 
rooms,  to  cook  their  chestnuts,  to  tell  stories 
to  their  children,  to  make  checkered  shadows 
on  their  walls,  to  boil  their  hurried  kettles,  and 
to  be  the  red  heart  of  a  man's  house  and  that 
hearth  for  which,  as  the  great  heathens  said, 
a  man  should  die. 

Now  it  is  the  great  mark  of  our  modernity 
that  people  are  always  proposing  substitutes 
for  these  old  things ;  and  these  substitutes  al- 
ways answer  one  purpose  where  the  old  thing 
answered  ten.  The  modern  man  will  wave  a 
cigarette  instead  of  a  stick ;  he  will  cut  his  pen- 
147 


THE     UNIVERSAL     STICK 

cil  with  a  little  screwing  pencil-sharpener  in- 
stead of  a  knife ;  and  he  will  even  boldly  offer  to 
be  warmed  by  hot  water  pipes  instead  of  a 
fire.  I  have  my  doubts  about  pencil-sharpeners 
even  for  sharpening  pencils ;  and  about  hot 
water  pipes  even  for  heat.  But  when  we  think 
of  all  those  other  requirements  that  these  in- 
stitutions answered,  there  opens  before  us  the 
whole  horrible  harlequinade  of  our  civilization. 
We  see  as  in  a  vision  a  world  where  a  man 
tries  to  cut  his  throat  with  a  pencil-sharpener; 
where  a  man  must  learn  single-stick  with  a 
cigarette;  where  a  man  must  try  to  toast  muf- 
fins at  electric  lamps,  and  see  red  and  golden 
castles  in  the  surface  of  hot  water  pipes. 

The  principle  of  which  I  speak  can  be  seen 
everywhere  in  a  comparison  between  the  ancient 
and  universal  things  and  the  modern  and  spe- 
cialist things.  The  object  of  a  theodolite  is  to 
lie  level;  the  object  of  a  stick  is  to  swing  loose 
at  any  angle;  to  whirl  like  the  very  wheel  of 
liberty.  The  object  of  a  lancet  is  to  lance; 
when  used  for  slashing,  gashing,  ripping,  lop- 
148 


THE     UNIVERSAL     STICK 

ping  off  heads  and  limbs,  it  is  a  disappointing 
instrument.  The  object  of  an  electric  light  is 
merely  to  light  (a  despicable  modesty)  ;  and  the 
object  of  an  asbestos  stove  ...  I  won- 
der what  is  the  object  of  an  asbestos  stove? 
If  a  man  found  a  coil  of  rope  in  a  desert  he 
could  at  least  think  of  all  the  things  that  can 
be  done  with  a  coil  of  rope;  and  some  of  them 
might  even  be  practical.  He  could  tow  a  boat 
or  lasso  a  horse.  He  could  play  cat's-cradle, 
or  pick  oakum.  He  could  construct  a  rope- 
ladder  for  an  eloping  heiress,  or  cord  her  boxes 
for  a  traveling  maiden  aunt.  He  could  learn 
to  tie  a  bow,  or  he  could  hang  himself.  Far 
otherwise  with  the  unfortunate  traveler  who 
should  find  a  telephone  in  the  desert.  You  can 
telephone  with  a  telephone;  you  cannot  do  any- 
thing else  with  it.  And  though  this  is  one  of 
the  wildest  joys  of  life,  it  falls  by  one  degree 
from  its  full  delirium  when  there  is  nobody  to 
answer  you.  The  contention  is,  in  brief,  that 
you  must  pull  up  a  hundred  roots,  and  not  one, 
before  you  uproot  any  of  these  hoary  and  sim- 
149 


THE     UNIVERSAL     STICK 

pie  expedients.  It  is  only  with  great  difficulty 
that  a  modern  scientific  sociologist  can  be  got 
to  see  that  any  old  method  has  a  leg  to  stand 
on.  But  almost  every  old  method  has  four 
or  five  legs  to  stand  on.  Almost  all  the  old 
institutions  are  quadrupeds ;  and  some  of  them 
are  centipedes. 

Consider  these  cases,  old  and  new,  and  you 
will  observe  the  operation  of  a  general  tendency. 
Everywhere  there  was  one  big  thing  that  served 
six  purposes ;  everywhere  now  there  are  six 
small  things;  or,  rather  (and  there  is  the  trou- 
ble), there  are  just  five  and  a  half.  Neverthe- 
less, we  will  not  say  that  this  separation  and 
specialism  is  entirely  useless  or  inexcusable.  I 
have  often  thanked  God  for  the  telephone;  I 
may  any  day  thank  God  for  the  lancet ;  and 
there  is  none  of  these  brilliant  and  narrow  in- 
ventions (except,  of  course,  the  asbestos  stove) 
which  might  not  be  at  some  moment  necessary 
and  lovely.  But  I  do  not  think  the  most  aus- 
tere upholder  of  specialism  will  deny  that  there 
is  in  these  old,  many-sided  institutions  an  ele- 
150 


THE     UNIVERSAL     STICK 

ment  of  unity  and  universality  which  may  well 
be  preserved  in  its  due  proportion  and  place. 
Spiritually,  at  least,  it  will  be  admitted  that 
some  all-round  balance  is  needed  to  equalize 
the  extravagance  of  experts.  It  would  not  be 
difficult  to  carry  the  parable  of  the  knife  and 
stick  into  higher  regions.  Religion,  the  im- 
mortal maiden,  has  been  a  maid-of-all-work  as 
well  as  a  servant  of  mankind.  She  provided 
men  at  once  with  the  theoretic  laws  of  an  unal- 
terable cosmos ;  and  also  with  the  practical 
rules  of  the  rapid  and  thrilling  game  of  moral- 
ity. She  taught  logic  to  the  student  and  told 
fairy  tales  to  the  children ;  it  was  her  business 
to  confront  the  nameless  gods  whose  fears  are 
on  all  flesh,  and  also  to  see  the  streets  were 
spotted  with  silver  and  scarlet,  that  there  was 
a  day  for  wearing  ribbons  or  an  hour  for  ring- 
ing bells.  The  large  uses  of  religion  have  been 
broken  up  into  lesser  specialties,  just  as  the 
uses  of  the  hearth  have  been  broken  up  into 
hot  water  pipes  and  electric  bulbs.  The  rof 
mance  of  ritual  and  colored  emblem  has  beer* 
151 


THE     UNIVERSAL     STICK 

taken  over  by  that  narrowest  of  all  trades, 
modern  art  (the  sort  called  art  for  art's  sake), 
and  men  are  in  modern  practice  informed  that 
they  may  use  all  symbols  so  long  as  they  mean 
nothing  by  them.  The  romance  of  conscience 
has  been  dried  up  into  the  science  of  ethics ; 
which  may  well  be  called  decency  for  decency's 
sake,  decency  unborn  of  cosmic  energies  and 
barren  of  artistic  flower.  The  cry  to  the  dim 
gods,  cut  off  from  ethics  and  cosmology,  has 
become  mere  Psychical  Research.  Everything 
has  been  sundered  from  everything  else,  and 
everything  has  grown  cold.  Soon  we  shall  hear 
of  specialists  dividing  the  tune  from  the  words 
of  a  song,  on  the  ground  that  they  spoil  each 
other;  and  I  did  once  meet  a  man  who  openly 
advocated  the  separation  of  almonds  and 
raisins.  This  world  is  all  one  wild  divorce 
court;  nevertheless,  there  are  many  who  still 
hear  in  their  souls  the  thunder  of  the  author- 
ity of  human  habit;  those  whom  Man  hath 
joined  let  no  man  sunder. 

This  book   must   avoid   religion,   but   there 
152 


THE     UNIVERSAL     STICK 

must  (I  say)  be  many,  religious  and  irreligious, 
who  will  concede  that  this  power  of  answering 
many  purposes  was  a  sort  of  strength  which 
should  not  wholly  die  out  of  our  lives.  As  a 
part  of  personal  character,  even  the  moderns 
will  agree  that  many-sidedness  is  a  merit  and  a 
merit  that  may  easily  be  overlooked.  This  bal- 
ance and  universality  has  been  the  vision  of 
many  groups  of  men  in  many  ages.  It  was  the 
Liberal  Education  of  Aristotle;  the  jack-of-all- 
trades  artistry  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci  and  his 
friends ;  the  august  amateurishness  of  the  Cava- 
lier Person  of  Quality  like  Sir  William  Temple 
or  the  great  Earl  of  Dorset.  It  has  appeared 
in  literature  in  our  time  in  the  most  erratic  and 
opposite  shapes,  set  to  almost  inaudible  music 
by  Walter  Pater  and  enunciated  through  a  fog- 
horn by  Walt  Whitman.  But  the  great  mass 
of  men  have  always  been  unable  to  achieve  this 
literal  universality,  because  of  the  nature  of 
their  work  in  the  world.  Not,  let  it  be  noted, 
because  of  the  existence  of  their  work.  Leon- 
ardo da  Vinci  must  have  worked  pretty  hard; 
153 


THE     UNIVERSAL     STICK 

on  the  other  hand,  many  a  government  office 
clerk,  village  constable  or  elusive  plumber  may 
do  (to  all  human  appearance)  no  work  at  all, 
and  yet  show  no  signs  of  the  Aristotelian  uni- 
versalism.  Whait  makes  it  difficult  for  the 
average  man  to  be  a  universalist  is  that  the 
average  man  has  to  be  a  specialist;  he  has  not 
only  to  learn  one  trade,  but  to  learn  it  so  well 
as  to  uphold  him  in  a  more  or  less  ruthless 
society.  This  is  generally  true  of  males  from 
the  first  hunter  to  the  last  electrical  engineer; 
each  has  not  merely  to  act,  but  to  excel.  Nim- 
rod  has  not  only  to  be  a  mighty  hunter  before 
the  Lord,  but  also  a  mighty  hunter  before  the 
other  hunters.  The  electrical  engineer  has  to 
be  a  very  electrical  engineer,  or  he  is  out- 
stripped by  engineers  yet  more  electrical. 
Those  very  miracles  of  the  human  mind  on 
which  the  modern  world  prides  itself,  and 
rightly  in  the  main,  would  be  impossible  without 
a  certain  concentration  which  disturbs  the  pure 
balance  of  reason  more  than  does  religious 
bigotry.  No  creed  can  be  so  limiting  as  that 


THE     UNIVERSAL     STICK 

awful  adjuration  that  the  cobbler  must  not  go 
beyond  his  last.  So  the  largest  and  wildest 
shots  of  our  world  are  but  in  one  direction  and 
with  a  defined  trajectory:  the  gunner  cannot 
go  beyond  his  shot,  and  his  shot  so  often  falls 
short;  the  astronomer  cannot  go  beyond  his 
telescope,  and  his  telescope  goes  such  a  little 
way.  All  these  are  like  men  who  have  stood 
on  the  high  peak  of  a  mountain  and  seen  the 
horizon  like  a  single  ring  and  who  then  descend 
down  different  paths  towards  different  towns, 
traveling  slow  or  fast.  It  is  right ;  there  must 
be  people  traveling  to  different  towns ;  there 
must  be  specialists ;  but  shall  no  one  behold  the 
horizon?  Shall  all  mankind  be  specialist  surgeons 
or  peculiar  plumbers ;  shall  all  humanity  be 
monomaniac?  Tradition  has  decided  that  only 
half  of  humanity  shall  be  monomaniac.  It  has 
decided  that  in  every  home  there  shall  be  a 
tradesman  and  a  Jack-of-all-trades.  But  it 
has  also  decided,  among  other  things,  that  the 
Jack-of-all-trades  shall  be  a  Gill-of-all-trades. 
It  has  decided,  rightly  or  wrongly,  that  this 
155 


THE     UNIVERSAL     STICK 

specialism  and  this  universalism  shall  be  di- 
vided between  the  sexes.  Cleverness  shall  be 
left  for  men  and  wisdom  for  women.  For  clev- 
erness kills  wisdom ;  that  is  one  of  the  few  sad 
and  certain  things. 

But  for  women  this  ideal  of  comprehensive 
capacity  (or  common-sense)  must  long  ago 
have  been  washed  away.  It  must  have  melted 
in  the  frightful  furnaces  of  ambition  and  eager 
technicality.  A  man  must  be  partly  a  one- 
idead  man,  because  he  is  a  one-weaponed  man — 
and  he  is  flung  naked  into  the  fight.  The 
world's  demand  comes  to  him  direct ;  to  his  wife 
indirectly.  In  short,  he  must  (as  the  books 
on  Success  say)  give  "  his  best " ;  and  what  a 
small  part  of  a  man  "  his  best "  is !  His  sec- 
ond and  third  best  are  often  much  better.  If 
he  is  the  first  violin  he  must  fiddle  for  life;  he 
must  not  remember  that  he  is  a  fine  fourth  bag- 
pipe, a  fair  fifteenth  billiard-cue,  a  foil,  a  foun- 
tain-pen, a  hand  at  whist,  a  gun,  and  an  image 
of  God. 

156 


Ill 

THE    EMANCIPATION    OF 
DOMESTICITY 

AND  it  should  be  remarked  in  passing  that  this 
force  upon  a  man  to  develop  one  feature  has 
nothing  to  do  with  what  is  commonly  called 
our  competitive  system,  but  would  equally  exist 
under  any  rationally  conceivable  kind  of  Col- 
lectivism. Unless  the  Socialists  are  frankly 
ready  for  a  fall  in  the  standard  of  violins,  tele- 
scopes and  electric  lights,  they  must  somehow 
create  a  moral  demand  on  the  individual  that 
he  shall  keep  up  his  present  concentration  on 
these  things.  It  was  only  by  men  being  in 
some  degree  specialist  that  there  ever  were  any 
telescopes ;  they  must  certainly  be  in  some  de- 
gree specialist  in  order  to  keep  them  going. 
It  is  not  by  making  a  man  a  State  wage-earner 
that  you  can  prevent  him  thinking  principally 
about  the  very  difficult  way  he  earns  his  wages. 
157 


THE    EMANCIPATION 

There  is  only  one  way  to  preserve  in  the  world 
that  high  levity  and  that  more  leisurely  outlook 
which  fulfills  the  old  vision  of  universalism. 
That  is,  to  permit  the  existence  of  a  partly 
protected  half  of  humanity;  a  half  which  the 
harassing  industrial  demand  troubles  indeed, 
but  only  troubles  indirectly.  In  other  words, 
there  must  be  in  every  center  of  humanity  one 
human  being  upon  a  larger  plan ;  one  who  does 
not  "  give  her  best,"  but  gives  her  all. 

Our  old  analogy  of  the  fire  remains  the  most 
workable  one.  The  fire  need  not  blaze  like 
electricity  nor  boil  like  boiling  water ;  its  point 
is  that  it  blazes  more  than  water  and  warms 
more  than  light.  The  wife  is  like  the  fire,  or 
to  put  things  in  their  proper  proportion,  the 
fire  is  like  the  wife.  Like  the  fire,  the  woman  is 
expected  to  cook:  not  to  excel  in  cooking,  but 
to  cook ;  to  cook  better  than  her  husband  who 
is  earning  the  coke  by  lecturing  on  botany  or 
breaking  stones.  Like  the  fire,  the  woman  is 
expected  to  tell  tales  to  the  children,  not  origi- 
nal and  artistic  tales,  but  tales — better  tales 
158 


THE    EMANCIPATION 

than  would  probably  be  told  by  a  first-class 
cook.  Like  the  fire,  the  woman  is  expected  to 
illuminate  and  ventilate,  not  by  the  most  star- 
tling revelations  or  the  wildest  winds  of 
thought,  but  better  than  a  man  can  do  it  after 
breaking  stones  or  lecturing.  But  she  cannot 
be  expected  to  endure  anything  like  this  uni- 
versal duty  if  she  is  also  to  endure  the  direct 
cruelty  of  competitive  or  bureaucratic  toil. 
Woman  must  be  a  cook,  but  not  a  competitive 
cook;  a  schoolmistress,  but  not  a  competitive 
schoolmistress;  a  house-decorator,  but  not  a 
competitive  house-decorator;  a  dressmaker,  but 
not  a  competitive  dressmaker.  She  should 
have  not  one  trade  but  twenty  hobbies ;  she, 
unlike  the  man,  may  develop  all  her  second 
bests.  This  is  what  has  been  really  aimed 
at  from  the  first  in  what  is  called  the  seclusion, 
or  even  the  oppression,  of  women.  Women 
were  not  kept  at  home  in  order  to  keep  them 
narrow;  on  the  contrary,  they  were  kept  at 
home  in  order  to  keep  them  broad.  The  world 
outside  the  home  was  one  mass  of  narrowness. 
159 


THE     EMANCIPATION 

a  maze  of  cramped  paths,  a  madhouse  of  mono- 
maniacs. It  was  only  by  partly  limiting  and 
protecting  the  woman  that  she  was  enabled  to 
play  at  five  or  six  professions  and  so  come  al- 
most as  near  to  God  as  the  child  when  he  plays 
at  A  hundred  trades.-  But  the  woman's  pro- 
fessions, unlike  the  child's,  were  all  truly  and 
almost  terribly  fruitful ;  so  tragically  real  that 
nothing  but  her  universality  and  balance  pre- 
vented them  being  merely  morbid.  This  is  the 
substance  of  the  contention  I  offer  about  the 
historic  female  position.  I  do  not  deny  that 
women  have  been  wronged  and  even  tortured; 
but  I  doubt  if  they  were  ever  tortured  so  much 
as  they  are  tortured  now  by  the  absurd  modern 
attempt  to  make  them  domestic  empresses  and 
competitive  clerks  at  the  same  time.  I  do  not 
deny  that  even  under  the  old  tradition  women 
had  a  harder  time  than  men ;  that  is  why  we 
take  off  our  hats.  I  do  not  deny  that  all  these 
various  female  functions  were  exasperating1; 
but  I  say  that  there  was  some  aim  and  meaning 
in  keeping  them  various.  I  do  not  pause  even 
160 


THE     EMANCIPATION 

to  deny  that  woman  was  a  servant ;  but  at  least 
she  was  a  general  servant. 

The  shortest  way  of  summarizing  the  posi- 
tion is  to  say  that  woman  stands  for  the  idea 
of  Sanity;  that  intellectual  home  to  which  the 
mind  must  return  after  every  excursion  on  ex- 
travagance. The  mind  that  finds  its  way  to 
wild  places  is  the  poet's ;  but  the  mind  that 
never  finds  its  way  back  is  the  lunatic's.  There 
must  in  every  machine  be  a  part  that  moves 
and  a  part  that  stands  still;  there  must  be  in 
everything  that  changes  a  part  that  is  un- 
changeable. And  many  of  the  phenomena 
which  moderns  hastily  condemn  are  really  parts 
of  this  position  of  the  woman  as  the  center  and 
pillar  of  health.  Much  of  what  is  called  her 
subservience,  and  even  her  pliability,  is  merely 
the  subservience  and  pliability  of  a  universal 
remedy;  she  varies  as  medicines  vary,  with  the 
disease.  She  has  to  be  an  optimist  to  the  mor- 
bid husband,  a  salutary  pessimist  to  the  happy- 
go-lucky  husband.  She  has  to  prevent  the 
Quixote  from  being  put  upon,  and  the  bully 
161 


THE     EMANCIPATION 

from  putting  upon  others.     The  French  King 
wrote — 

"Tou jours  ferame  varie 
Bien  fol  qui  s'y  fie," 

but  the  truth  is  that  woman  always  varies,  and 
that  is  exactly  why  we  always  trust  her.  To 
correct  every  adventure  and  extravagance  with 
its  antidote  in  common-sense  is  not  (as  the 
moderns  seem  to  think)  to  be  in  the  position  of 
a  spy  or  a  slave.  It  is  to  be  in  the  position 
of  Aristotle  or  (at  the  lowest)  Herbert  Spencer, 
to  be  a  universal  morality,  a  complete  system 
of  thought.  The  slave  flatters ;  the  complete 
moralist  rebukes.  It  is,  in  short,  to  be  a  Trim- 
mer in  the  true  sense  of  that  honorable  term; 
which  for  some  reason  or  other  is  always  used 
in  a  sense  exactly  opposite  to  its  own.  It 
seems  really  to  be  supposed  that  a  Trimmer 
means  a  cowardly  person  who  always  goes  over 
to  the  stronger  side.  It  really  means  a  highly 
chivalrous  person  who  always  goes  over  to  the 
weaker  side;  like  one  who  trims  a  boat  by  sit- 
162 


ting  where  there  are  few  people  seated.  Woman 
is  a  trimmer;  and  it  is  a  generous,  dangerous 
and  romantic  trade. 

The  final  fact  which  fixes  this  is  a  sufficiently 
plain  one.  Supposing  it  to  be  conceded  that 
humanity  has  acted  at  least  not  unnaturally  in 
dividing  itself  into  two  halves,  respectively 
typifying  the  ideals  of  special  talent  and  of 
general  sanity  (since  they  are  genuinely  diffi- 
cult to  combine  completely  in  one  mind),  it  is 
not  difficult  to  see  why  the  line  of  cleavage 
has  followed  the  line  of  sex,  or  why  the  female 
became  the  emblem  of  the  universal  and  the 
male  of  the  special  and  superior.  Two  gigantic 
facts  of  nature  fixed  it  thus:  first,  that  the 
woman  who  frequently  fulfilled  her  functions 
literally  could  not  be  specially  prominent  in 
experiment  and  adventure ;  and  second,  that  the 
same  natural  operation  surrounded  her  with 
very  young  children,  who  require  to  be  taught 
not  so  much  anything  as  everything.  Babies 
need  not  to  be  taught  a  trade,  but  to  be  intro- 
duced to  a  world.  To  put  the  matter  shortly, 
163 


THE     EMANCIPATION 

woman  is  generally  shut  up  in  a  house  with  a 
human  being  at  the  time  when  he  asks  all  the 
questions  that  there  are,  and  some  that  there 
aren't.  It  would  be  odd  if  she  retained  any  of 
the  narrowness  of  a  specialist.  Now  if  anyone 
says  that  this  duty  of  general  enlightenment 
(even  when  freed  from  modern  rules  and  hours, 
and  exercised  more  spontaneously  by  a  more 
protected  person)  is  in  itself  too  exacting  and 
oppressive,  I  can  understand  the  view.  I  can 
only  answer  that  our  race  has  thought  it  worth 
while  to  cast  this  burden  on  women  in  order  to 
keep  common-sense  in  the  world.  But  when 
people  begin  to  talk  about  this  domestic  duty 
as  not  merely  difficult  but  trivial  and  dreary, 
I  simply  give  up  the  question.  For  I  cannot 
with  the  utmost  energy  of  imagination  con- 
ceive what  they  mean.  When  domesticity,  for 
instance,  is  called  drudgery,  all  the  difficulty 
arises  from  a  double  meaning  in  the  word.  If 
drudgery  only  means  dreadfully  hard  work,  I 
admit  the  woman  drudges  in  the  home,  as  a 
man  might  drudge  at  the  Cathedral  of  Arniens 
164* 


THE     EMANCIPATION 

or  drudge  behind  a  gun  at  Trafalgar.  But  if 
it  means  that  the  hard  work  is  more  heavy 
because  it  is  trifling,  colorless  and  of  small  im- 
port to  the  soul,  then  as  I  say,  I  give  it  up ;  I 
do  not  know  what  the  words  mean.  To  be 
Queen  Elizabeth  within  a  definite  area,  decid- 
ing sales,  banquets,  labors  and  holidays ;  to  be 
Whiteley  within  a  certain  area,  providing  toys, 
boots,  sheets,  cakes,  and  books,  to  be  Aristotle 
within  a  certain  area,  teaching  morals,  man- 
ners, theology,  and  hygiene;  I  can  understand 
how  this  might  exhaust  the  mind,  but  I  cannot 
imagine  how  it  could  narrow  it.  How  can  it 
be  a  large  career  to  tell  other  people's  children 
about  the  Rule  of  Three,  and  a  small  career  to 
tell  one's  own  children  about  the  universe? 
How  can  it  be  broad  to  be  the  same  thing  to 
everyone,  and  narrow  to  be  everything  to  some- 
one? No;  a  woman's  function  is  laborious, 
but  because  it  is  gigantic,  not  because  it  is 
minute.  I  will  pity  Mrs.  Jones  for  the  huge- 
ness of  her  task;  I  will  never  pity  her  for  its 
smallness. 

165 


THE     EMANCIPATION 

But  though  the  essential  of  the  woman's 
task  is  universality,  this  does  not,  of  course, 
prevent  her  from  having  one  or  two  severe 
though  largely  wholesome  prejudices.  She  has, 
on  the  whole,  been  more  conscious  than  man 
that  she  is  only  one  half  of  humanity ;  but  she 
has  expressed  it  (if  one  may  say  so  of  a  lady) 
by  getting  her  teeth  into  the  two  or  three 
things  which  she  thinks  she  stands  for.  I 
would  observe  here  in  parenthesis  that  much  of 
the  recent  official  trouble  about  women  has 
arisen  from  the  fact  that  they  transfer  to 
things  of  doubt  and  reason  that  sacred  stub- 
bornness only  proper  to  the  primary  things 
which  a  woman  was  set  to  guard.  One's  own 
children,  one's  own  altar,  ought  to  be  a  matter 
of  principle — or  if  you  like,  a  matter  of  preju- 
dice. On  the  other  hand,  who  wrote  Junius's 
Letters  ought  not  to  be  a  principle  or  a  preju- 
dice, it  ought  to  be  a  matter  of  free  and  almost 
indifferent  inquiry.  But  make  an  energetic 
modern  girl  secretary  to  a  league  to  show  that 
George  III.  wrote  Junius,  and  in  three  months 
166 


THE     EMANCIPATION 

she  will  believe  it,  too,  out  of  mere  loyalty  to 
her  employers.  Modern  women  defend  their 
office  with  all  the  fierceness  .of  dlomesticity. 
They  fight  for  desk  and  typewriter  as  for 
hearth  and  home,  and  develop  a  sort  of  wolfish 
wifehood  on  behalf  of  the  invisible  head  of  the 
firm.  That  is  why  they  do  office  work  so  well ; 
and  that  is  why  they  ought  not  to  do  it. 


IV 

THE     ROMANCE    OF    THRIFT 

THE  larger  part  of  womankind,  however,  have 
had  to  fight  for  things  slightly  more  intoxicat- 
ing to  the  eye  than  the  desk  or  the  typewriter ; 
and  it  cannot  be  denied  that  in  defending  these, 
women  have  developed  the  quality  called  preju- 
dice to  a  powerful  and  even  menacing  degree. 
But  these  prejudices  will  always  be  found  to 
fortify  the  main  position  of  the  woman,  that 
she  is  to  remain  a  general  overseer,  an  autocrat 
within  small  compass  but  on  all  sides.  On  the 
one  or  two  points  on  which  she  really  misun- 
derstands the  man's  position,  it  is  almost  en- 
tirely in  order  to  preserve  her  own.  The  two 
points  on  which  woman,  actually  and  of  her- 
self, is  most  tenacious  may  be  roughly  sum- 
marized as  the  ideal  of  thrift  and  the  ideal  of 
dignity. 

Unfortunately  for  this  book  it  is  written  by 
168 


ROMANCE     OF    THRIFT 

a  male,  and  these  two  qualities,  if  not  hateful 
to  a  man,  are  at  least  hateful  in  a  man.  But 
if  we  are  to  settle  the  sex  question  at  all  fairly, 
all  males  must  make  an  imaginative  attempt  to 
enter  into  the  attitude  of  all  good  women  to- 
ward these  two  things.  The  difficulty  exists 
especially,  perhaps,  in  the  thing  called  thrift; 
we  men  have  so  much  encouraged  each  other 
in  throwing  money  right  and  left,  that  there 
has  come  at  last  to  be  a  sort  of  chivalrous  and 
poetical  air  about  losing  sixpence.  But  on  a 
broader  and  more  candid  consideration  the  case 
scarcely  stands  so. 

Thrift  is  the  really  romantic  thing;  economy 
is  more  romantic  than  extravagance.  Heaven 
knows  I  for  one  speak  disinterestedly  in  the 
matter;  for  I  cannot  clearly  remember  saving 
a  half-penny  ever  since  I  was  born.  But  the 
thing  is  true ;  economy,  properly  understood,  is 
the  more  poetic.  Thrift  is  poetic  because  it  is 
creative;  waste  is  unpoetic  because  it  is  waste. 
It  is  prosaic  to  throw  money  away,  because  it 
is  prosaic  to  throw  anything  away ;  it  is  nega- 
169 


ROMANCE     OF    THRIFT 

tive;  it  is  a  confession  of  indifference,  that  is, 
it  is  a  confession  of  failure.  The  most  prosaic 
thing  about  the  house  is  the  dustbin,  and  the 
one  great  objection  to  the  new  fastidious  and 
aesthetic  homestead  is  simply  that  in  such  a 
moral  menage  the  dustbin  must  be  bigger  than 
the  house.  If  a  man  could  undertake  to  make 
use  of  all  things  in  his  dustbin  he  would  be 
a  broader  genius  than  Shakespeare.  When 
science  began  to  use  by-products ;  when  science 
found  that  colors  could  be  made  out  of  coal- 
tar,  she  made  her  greatest  and  perhaps  her 
only  claim  on  the  real  respect  of  the  human 
soul.  Now  the  aim  of  the  good  woman  is  to 
use  the  by-products,  or,  in  other  words,  to  rum- 
mage in  the  dustbin. 

A  man  can  only  fully  comprehend  it  if  he 
thinks  of  some  sudden  joke  or  expedient  got 
up  with  such  materials  as  may  be  found  in  a 
private  house  on  a  rainy  day.  A  man's  defi- 
nite daily  work  is  generally  run  with  such  rigid 
convenience  of  modern  science  that  thrift,  the 
picking  up  of  potential  helps  here  and  there, 
170 


ROMANCE    OF    THRIFT 

has  almost  become  unmeaning  to  him.  He 
comes  across  it  most  (as  I  say)  when  lie  is 
playing  some  game  within  four  walls ;  when  in 
charades,  a  hearthrug  will  just  do  for  a  fur 
coat,  or  a  tea-cozy  just  do  for  a  cocked  hat; 
when  a  toy  theater  needs  timber  and  cardboard, 
and  the  house  has  just  enough  firewood  and 
just  enough  bandboxes.  This  is  the  man's  oc- 
casional glimpse  and  pleasing  parody  of  thrift. 
But  many  a  good  housekeeper  plays  the  same 
game  every  day  with  ends  of  cheese  and  scraps 
of  silk,  not  because  she  is  mean,  but  on  the 
contrary,  because  she  is  magnanimous ;  because 
she  wishes  her  creative  mercy  to  be  over  all  her 
works,  that  not  one  sardine  should  be  destroyed, 
or  cast  as  rubbish  to  the  void,  when  she  has 
made  the  pile  complete. 

The  modern  world  must  somehow  be  made 
to  understand  (in  theology  and  other  things) 
that  a  view  may  be  vast,  broad,  universal,  lib- 
eral and  yet  come  into  conflict  with  another 
view  that  is  vast,  broad,  universal  and  liberal 
also.  There  is  never  a  war  between  two  sects, 
171 


ROMANCE    OF    THRIFT 

but  only  between  two  universal  Catholic 
Churches.  The  only  possible  collision  is  the 
collision  of  one  cosmos  with  another.  So  in 
a  smaller  way  it  must  be  first  made  clear  that 
this  female  economic  ideal  is  a  part  of  that 
female  variety  of  outlook  and  all-round  art  of 
life  which  we  have  already  attributed  to  the 
sex:  thrift  is  not  a  small  or  timid  or  provincial 
thing;  it  is  part  of  that  great  idea  of  the 
woman  watching  on  all  sides  out  of  all  the 
windows  of  the  soul  and  being  answerable  for 
everything.  For  in  the  average  human  house 
there  is  one  hole  by  which  money  comes  in  and 
a  hundred  by  which  it  goes  out ;  man  has  to  do 
with  the  one  hole,  woman  with  the  hundred. 
But  though  the  very  stinginess  of  a  woman  is 
a  part  of  her  spiritual  breadth,  it  is  none  the 
less  true  that  it  brings  her  into  conflict  with 
the  special  kind  of  spiritual  breadth  that  be- 
longs to  the  males  of  the  tribe.  It  brings  her 
into  conflict  with  that  shapeless  cataract  of 
Comradeship,  of  chaotic  feasting  and  deafen- 
ing1 debate,  which  we  noted  in  the  last  section. 


ROMANCE    OF    THRIFT 

The  very  touch  of  the  eternal  in  the  two  sexual 
tastes  brings  them  the  more  into  antagonism; 
for  one  stands  for  a  universal  vigilance  and 
the  other  for  an  almost  infinite  output.  Partly 
through  the  nature  of  his  moral  weakness,  and 
partly  through  the  nature  of  his  physical 
strength,  the  male  is  normally  prone  to  ex- 
pand things  into  a  sort  of  eternity ;  he  always 
thinks  of  a  dinner  party  as  lasting  all  night; 
and  he  always  thinks  of  a  night  as  lasting  for- 
ever. When  the  working  women  in  the  poor 
districts  come  to  the  doors  of  the  public  houses 
and  try  to  get  their  husbands  home,  simple- 
minded  "  social  workers  "  always  imagine  that 
every  husband  is  a  tragic  drunkard  and  every 
wife  a  broken-hearted  saint.  It  never  occurs 
to  them  that  the  poor  woman  is  only  doing 
under  coarser  conventions  exactly  what  every 
fashionable  hostess  docs  when  she  tries  to  get 
the  men  from  arguing  over  the  cigars  to  come 
and  gossip  over  the  teacups.  These  women 
are  not  exasperated  merely  at  the  amount  of 
money  that  is  wasted  in  beer;  they  are  exas- 
173 


ROMANCE    OF    THRIFT 

perated  also  at  the  amount  of  time  that  is 
wasted  in  talk.  It  is  not  merely  what  goeth 
into  the  mouth  but  what  cometh  out  of  the 
mouth  that,  in  their  opinion,  defileth  a  man. 
They  will  raise  against  an  argument  (like  their 
sisters  of  all  ranks)  the  ridiculous  objection 
that  nobody  is  convinced  by  it;  as  if  a  man 
wanted  to  make  a  body-slave  of  anybody  with 
whom  he  had  played  single-stick.  But  the 
real  female  prejudice  on  this  point  is  not  with- 
out a  basis ;  the  real  feeling  is  this,  that  the 
most  masculine  pleasures  have  a  quality  of  the 
ephemeral.  A  duchess  may  ruin  a  duke  for 
a  diamond  necklace;  but  there  is  the  necklace. 
A  coster  may  ruin  his  wife  for  a  pot  of  beer; 
and  where  is  the  beer?  The  duchess  quarrels 
with  another  duchess  in  order  to  crush  her,  to 
produce  a  result;  the  coster  does  not  argue 
with  another  coster  in  order  to  convince  him, 
but  in  order  to  enjoy  at  once  the  sound  of 
his  own  voice,  the  clearness  of  his  own  opinions 
and  the  sense  of  masculine  society.  There  is 
this  element  of  a  fine  fruitlessness  about  the 
174 


ROMANCE    OF    THRIFT 

male  enjoyments ;  wine  is  poured  into  a  bottom- 
less bucket;  thought  plunges  into  a  bottomless 
abyss.  All  this  has  set  woman  against  the 
Public  House — that  is,  against  the  Parliament 
House.  She  is  there  to  prevent  waste;  and 
the  "  pub "  and  the  parliament  are  the  very 
palaces  of  waste.  In  the  upper  classes  the 
"  pub  "  is  called  the  club,  but  that  makes  no 
more  difference  to  the  reason  than  it  does  to 
the  rhyme.  High  and  low,  the  woman's  ob- 
jection to  the  Public  House  is  perfectly  definite 
and  rational ;  it  is  that  the  Public  House  wastes 
the  energies  that  could  be  used  on  the  private 
house. 

As  it  is  about  feminine  thrift  against  mascu- 
line waste,  so  it  is  about  feminine  dignity 
against  masculine  rowdiness.  The  woman  has 
a  fixed  and  very  well-founded  idea  that  if  she 
does  not  insist  on  good  manners  nobody  else 
will.  Babies  are  not  always  strong  on  the  point 
of  dignity,  and  grown-up  men  are  quite  unpre- 
sentable. It  is  true  that  there  are  many  very  po- 
lite men,  but  none  that  I  ever  heard  of  who  were 
175 


ROMANCE    OF    THRIFT 

not  either  fascinating  women  or  obeying  them. 
But  indeed  the  female  ideal  of  dignity,  like  the 
female  ideal  of  thrift,  lies  deeper  and  may 
easily  be  misunderstood.  It  rests  ultimately 
on  a  strong  idea  of  spiritual  isolation ;  the 
same  that  makes  women  religious.  They  do  not 
like  being  melted  down;  they  dislike  and  avoid 
the  mob.  That  anonymous  quality  we  have  re- 
marked in  the  club  conversation  would  be  com- 
mon impertinence  in  a  case  of  ladies.  I 
remember  an  artistic  and  eager  lady  asking 
me  in  her  grand  green  drawing-room  whether  I 
believed  in  comradeship  between  the  sexes,  and 
why  not.  I  was  driven  back  on  offering  the  ob- 
vious and  sincere  answer  "  Because  if  I  were  to 
treat  you  for  two  minutes  like  a  comrade  you 
would  turn  me  out  of  the  house."  The  only 
certain  rule  on  this  subject  is  always  to  deal 
with  woman  and  never  with  women.  "  Women  " 
is  a  profligate  word;  I  have  used  it  repeatedly 
in  this  chapter;  but  it  always  has  a  blackguard 
sound.  It  smells  of  oriental  cynicism  and  he- 
donism. Every  woman  is  a  captive  queen. 
176 


ROMANCE     OF    THRIFT 

But  every   crowd  of  women   is   only  a  harem 
broken  loose. 

I  am  not  expressing  my  own  views  here,  but 
those  of  nearly  all  the  women  I  have  known. 
It  is  quite  unfair  to  say  that  a  woman  hates 
other  women  individually ;  but  I  think  it  would 
be  quite  true  to  say  that  she  detests  them  in 
a  confused  heap.  And  this  is  not  because  she 
despises  her  own  sex,  but  because  she  respects 
it;  and  respects  especially  that  sanctity  and 
separation  of  each  item  which  is  represented 
in  manners  by  the  idea  of  dignity  and  In  morals 
by  the  idea  of  chastity. 


irr 


THE    COLDNESS    OF    CHLOE 

WE  hear  much  of  the  human  error  which  ac- 
cepts what  is  sham  as  what  is  real.  But  it  is 
worth  while  to  remember  that  with  unfamiliar 
things  we  often  mistake  what  is  real  for  what 
is  sham.  It  is  true  that  a  very  young  man  may 
think  the  wig  of  an  actress  is  her  hair.  But  it 
is  equally  true  that  a  child  yet  younger  may 
call  the  hair  of  a  negro  his  wig.  Just  because 
the  woolly  savage  is  remote  and  barbaric  he 
seems  to  be  unnaturally  neat  and  tidy.  Every- 
one must  have  noticed  the  same  thing  in  the 
fixed  and  almost  offensive  color  of  all  unfamil- 
iar things,  tropic  birds  and  tropic  blossoms. 
Tropic  birds  look  like  staring  toys  out  of  a 
toy-shop.  Tropic  flowers  simply  look  like 
artificial  flowers,  like  things  cut  out  of  wax. 
This  is  a  deep  matter,  and,  I  think,  not  un- 
connected with  divinity;  but  anyhow  it  is  the 
178 


THE    COLDNESS    OF    CHLOE 

truth  that  when  we  see  things  for  the  first  time 
we  feel  instantly  that  they  are  fictive  creations ; 
we  feel  the  finger  of  God.  It  is  only  when  we 
are  thoroughly  used  to  them  and  our  five  wits 
are  wearied,  that  we  see  them  as  wild  and  ob- 
jectless; like  the  shapeless  tree-tops  or  the 
shifting  cloud.  It  is  the  design  in  Nature  that 
strikes  us  first ;  the  sense  of  the  crosses  and  con- 
fusions in  that  design  only  comes  afterwards 
through  experience  and  an  almost  eerie  monot- 
ony. If  a  man  saw  the  stars  abruptly  by 
accident  he  would  think  them  as  festive  and  as 
artificial  as  a  firework.  We  talk  of  the  folly 
of  painting  the  lily ;  but  if  we  saw  the  lily  with- 
out warning  we  should  think  that  it  was  painted. 
We  talk  of  the  devil  not  being  so  black  as  he  is 
painted;  but  that  very  phrase  is  a  testimony 
to  the  kinship  between  what  is  called  vivid  and 
what  is  called  artificial.  If  the  modern  sage 
had  only  one  glimpse  of  grass  and  sky,  he 
would  say  that  grass  was  not  as  green  as  it  was 
painted;  that  sky  was  not  as  blue  as  it  was 
painted.  If  one  could  see  the  whole  universe 
179 


THE     COLDNESS     OF    CHLOE 

suddenly,  it  would  look  like  a  bright-colored 
toy,  just  as  the  South  American  hornbill  looks 
like  a  bright-colored  toy.  And  so  they  are — 
both  of  them,  I  mean. 

But  it  was  not  with  this  aspect  of  the  star- 
tling air  of  artifice  about  all  strange  objects 
that  I  meant  to  deal.  I  mean  merely,  as  a 
guide  to  history,  that  we  should  not  be  sur- 
prised if  things  wrought  in  fashions  remote 
from  ours  seem  artificial;  we  should  convince 
ourselves  that  nine  times  out  of  ten  these  things 
are  nakedly  and  almost  indecently  honest.  You 
will  hear  men  talk  of  the  frosted  classicism  of 
Corneille  or  of  the  powdered  pomposities  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  but  all  these  phrases  are 
very  superficial.  There  never  was  an  artificial 
epoch.  There  never  was  an  age  of  reason. 
Men  were  always  men  and  women  women:  and 
their  two  generous  appetites  always  were  the 
expression  of  passion  and  the  telling  of  truth. 
We  can  see  something  stiff  and  quaint  in  their 
mode  of  expression,  just  as  our  descendants 
will  see  something  stiff  and  quaint  in  our  coars- 
180 


THE     COLDNESS     OF    CHLOE 

est  slum  sketch  or  our  most  naked  pathological 
play.  But  men  have  never  talked  about  any- 
thing but  important  things ;  and  the  next  force 
in  femininity  which  we  have  to  consider  can 
be  considered  best  perhaps  in  some  dusty  old 
volume  of  verses  by  a  person  of  quality. 

The  eighteenth  century  is  spoken  of  as  the 
period  of  artificiality,  in  externals  at  least ; 
but,  indeed,  there  may  be  two  words  about  that. 
In  modern  speech  one  uses  artificiality  as  mean- 
ing indefinitely  a  sort  of  deceit ;  and  the  eigh- 
teenth century  was  far  too  artificial  to  deceive. 
It  cultivated  that  completest  art  that  does  not 
conceal  the  art.  Its  fashions  and  costumes 
positively  revealed  nature  by  avowing  artifice; 
as  in  that  obvious  instance  of  a  barbering  that 
frosted  every  head  with  the  same  silver.  It 
would  be  fantastic  to  call  this  a  quaint  humil- 
ity that  concealed  youth;  but,  at  least,  it  was 
not  one  with  the  evil  pride  that  conceals  old 
age.  Under  the  eighteenth  century  fashion 
people  did  not  so  much  all  pretend  to  be  young, 
as  all  agree  to  be  old.  The  same  applies  to  the 
181 


THE    COLDNESS    OF    CHLOE 

most  odd  and  unnatural  of  their  fashions ;  they 
were  freakish,  but  they  were  not  false.  A 
lady  may  or  may  not  be  as  red  as  she  is  painted, 
but  plainly  she  was  not  so  black  as  she  was 
patched. 

But  I  only  introduce  the  reader  into  this 
atmosphere  of  the  older  and  franker  fictions 
that  he  may  be  induced  to  have  patience  for  a 
moment  with  a  certain  element  which  is  very 
common  in  the  decoration  and  literature  of  that 
age  and  of  the  two  centuries  preceding  it.  It 
is  necessary  to  mention  it  in  such  a  connection 
because  it  is  exactly  one  of  those  things  that 
look  as  superficial  as  powder,  and  are  really 
as  rooted  as  hair. 

In  all  the  old  flowery  and  pastoral  love-songs, 
those  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  cen^ 
turies  especially,  you  will  find  a  perpetual  re- 
proach against  woman  in  the  matter  of  her 
coldness;  ceaseless  and  stale  similes  that  com- 
pare her  eyes  to  northern  stars,  her  heart  to 
ice,  or  her  bosom  to  snow.  Now  most  of  us 
have  always  supposed  these  old  and  iterant 
182 


THE    COLDNESS     OF    CHLOE 

phrases  to  be  a  mere  pattern  of  dead  words,  a 
thing  like  a  cold  wall-paper.  Yet  I  think  those 
old  cavalier  poets  who  wrote  about  the  cold- 
ness of  Chloe  had  hold  of  a  psychological  truth 
missed  in  nearly  all  the  realistic  novels  of  to- 
day. Our  psychological  romancers  perpetually 
represent  wives  as  striking  terror  into  their 
husbands  by  rolling  on  the  floor,  gnashing  their 
teeth,  throwing  about  the  furniture  or  poison- 
ing the  coffee ;  all  this  upon  some  strange  fixed 
theory  that  women  are  what  they  call  emo- 
tional. Btat  in  truth  the  old  and  frigid  form 
is  much  nearer  to  the  vital  fact.  Most  men  if 
they  spoke  with  any  sincerity  would  agree  that 
the  most  terrible  quality  in  women,  whether  in 
friendship,  courtship  or  marriage,  was  not  so 
much  being  emotional  as  being  unemotional. 

There  is  an  awful  armor  of  ice  which  may 
be  the  legitimate  protection  of  a  more  delicate 
organism ;  but  whatever  be  the  psychological 
explanation  there  can  surely  be  no  question  of 
the  fact.  The  instinctive  cry  of  the  female  in 
anger  is  the  noli  me  tangere.  I  take  this  as 
183 


THE     COLDNESS     OF    CHLOE 

the  most  obvious  and  at  the  same  time  the  least 
hackneyed  instance  of  a  fundamental  quality  in 
the  female  tradition,  which  has  tended  in  our 
time  to  be  almost  immeasurably  misunderstood, 
both  by  the  cant  of  moralists  and  the  cant  of 
immoralists.  The  proper  name  for  the  thing  is 
modesty;  but  as  we  live  in  an  age  of  prejudice 
and  must  not  call  things  by  their  right  names, 
we  will  yield  to  a  more  modern  nomenclature 
and  call  it  dignity.  Whatever  else  it  is,  it  is 
the  thing  which  a  thousand  poets  and  a  million 
lovers  have  called  the  coldness  of  Chloe.  It  is 
akin  to  the  classical,  and  is  at  least  the  oppo- 
site of  the  grotesque.  And  since  we  are  talking 
here  chiefly  in  types  and  symbols,  perhaps  as 
good  an  embodiment  as  any  of  the  idea  may  be 
found  in  the  mere  fact  of  a  woman  wearing  a 
skirt.  It  is  highly  typical  of  the  rabid  plagiar- 
ism which  now  passes  everywhere  for  emanci- 
pation, that  a  little  while  ago  it  was  common 
for  an  "  advanced "  woman  to  claim  the  right 
to  wear  trousers ;  a  right  about  as  grotesque 
as  the  right  to  wear  a  false  nose.  Whether 
184 


THE    COLDNESS     OF    CHLOE 

female  liberty  is  much  advanced  by  the  act  of 
wearing  a  skirt  on  each  leg  I  do  not  know ; 
perhaps  Turkish  women  might  offer  some  in- 
formation on  the  point.  But  if  the  western 
woman  walks  about  (as  it  were)  trailing  the 
curtains  of  the  harem  with  her,  it  is  quite  cer- 
tain that  the  woven  mansion  is  meant  for  a 
perambulating  palace,  not  for  a  perambulating 
prison.  It  is  quite  certain  that  the  skirt  means 
female  dignity,  not  female  submission;  it  can 
be  proved  by  the  simplest  of  all  tests.  No 
ruler  would  deliberately  dress  up  in  the  rec- 
ognized fetters  of  a  slave;  no  judge  would 
appear  covered  with  broad  arrows.  But  when 
men  wish  to  be  safely  impressive,  as  judges, 
priests  or  kings,  they  do  wear  skirts,  the  long, 
trailing  robes  of  female  dignity.  The  whole 
world  is  under  petticoat  government;  for  even 
men  wear  petticoats  when  they  wish  to  govern. 


185 


VI 

THE   PEDANT   AND   THE  SAVAGE 

WE  say  then  that  the  female  holds  up  with 
two  strong  arms  these  two  pillars  of  civiliza- 
tion ;  we  say  also  that  she  could  do  neither, 
but  for  her  position ;  her  curious  position  of 
private  omnipotence,  universality  on  a  small 
scale.  The  first  element  is  thrift;  not  the  de- 
structive thrift  of  the  miser,  but  the  creative 
thrift  of  the  peasant;  the  second  element  is 
dignity,  which  is  but  the  expression  of  sacred 
personality  and  privacy.  Now  I  know  the  ques- 
tion that  will  be  abruptly  and  automatically 
asked  by  all  that  know  the  dull  tricks  and 
turns  of  the  modern  sexual  quarrel.  The  ad- 
vanced person  will  at  once  begin  to  argue  about 
whether  these  instincts  are  inherent  and  in- 
evitable in  woman  or  whether  they  are  merely 
prejudices  produced  by  her  history  and  educa- 
tion. Now  I  do  not  propose  to  discuss  whether 
786 


PEDANT    AND    SAVAGE 

woman  could  now  be  educated  out  of  her  habits 
touching  thrift  and  dignity;  and  that  for  two 
excellent  reasons.  First  it  is  a  question  which 
cannot  conceivably  ever  find  any  answer:  that 
is  why  modern  people  are  so  fond  of  it.  From 
the  nature  of  the  case  it  is  obviously  impossi- 
ble to  decide  whether  any  of  the  peculiarities  of 
civilized  man  have  been  strictly  necessary  to  his 
civilization.  It  is  not  self-evident  (for  in- 
stance), that  even  the  habit  of  standing  up- 
right was  the  only  path  of  human  progress. 
There  might  have  been  a  quadrupedal  civiliza- 
tion, in  which  a  city  gentleman  put  on  four 
boots  to  go  to  the  city  every  morning.  Or 
there  might  have  been  reptilian  civilization,  in 
which  he  rolled  up  to  the  office  on  his  stomach ; 
it  is  impossible  to  say  that  intelligence  might 
not  have  developed  in  such  creatures.  All  we 
can  say  is  that  man  as  he  is  walks  upright ; 
and  that  woman  is  something  almost  more  up- 
right than  uprightness. 

And  the  second  point  is  this:  that  upon  the 
whole  we  rather  prefer  women  (nay,  even  men) 
187 


PEDANT     AND     SAVAGE 

to  walk  upright;  so  we  do  not  waste  much  of 
our  noble  lives  in  inventing  any  other  way  for 
them  to  walk.  In  short,  my  second  reason  for 
not  speculating  upon  whether  woman  might  get 
rid  of  these  peculiarities,  is  that  I  do  not  want 
her  to  get  rid  of  them ;  nor  does  she.  I  will 
not  exhaust  my  intelligence  by  inventing  ways 
in  which  mankind  might  unlearn  the  violin  or 
forget  how  to  ride  horses ;  and  the  art  of 
domesticity  seems  to  me  as  special  and  as  valu- 
able as  all  the  ancient  arts  of  our  race.  Nor  do 
I  propose  to  enter  at  all  into  those  formless 
and  floundering  speculations  about  how  woman 
was  or  is  regarded  in  the  primitive  times  that 
we  cannot  remember,  or  in  the  savage  countries 
which  we  cannot  understand.  Even  if  these 
people  segregated  their  women  for  low  or 
barbaric  reasons  it  would  not  make  our  reasons 
barbaric;  and  I  am  haunted  with  a  tenacious 
suspicion  that  these  people's  feelings  were 
really,  under  other  forms,  very  much  the  same 
as  ours.  Some  impatient  trader,  some  super- 
ficial missionary,  walks  across  an  island  and 
188 


PEDANT    AND     SAVAGE 

sees  the  squaw  digging  in  the  fields  while  the 
man  is  playing  a  flute;  and  immediately  says 
that  the  man  is  a  mere  lord  of  creation  and  the 
woman  a  mere  serf.  He  does  not  remember  that 
he  might  see  the  same  thing  in  half  the  back 
gardens  in  Brixton,  merely  because  women  are 
at  once  more  conscientious  and  more  impatient, 
while  men  are  at  once  more  quiescent  and  more 
greedy  for  pleasure.  It  may  often  be  in  Hawaii 
simply  as  it  is  in  Hoxton.  That  is,  the  woman 
does  not  work  because  the  man  tells  her  to 
work  and  she  obeys.  On  the  contrary,  the  wo- 
man works  because  she  has  told  the  man  to 
work,  and  he  hasn't  obeyed.  I  do  not  affirm 
that  this  is  the  whole  truth,  but  I  do  affirm 
that  we  have  too  little  comprehension  of  the 
souls  of  savages  to  know  how  far  it  is  untrue. 
It  is  the  same  with  the  relations  of  our  hasty 
and  surface  science,  with  the  problem  of  sexual 
dignity  and  modesty.  Professors  find  all  over 
the  world  fragmentary  ceremonies  in  which  the 
bride  affects  some  sort  of  reluctance,  hides 
from  her  husband,  or  runs  away  from  him, 
189 


PEDANT     AND     SAVAGE 

The  professor  then  pompously  proclaims  that 
this  is  a  survival  of  Marriage  by  Capture.  I 
wonder  he  never  says  that  the  veil  thrown  over 
the  bride  is  really  a  net.  I  gravely  doubt 
whether  women  ever  were  married  by  capture. 
I  think  they  pretended  to  be;  as  they  do  still. 
It  is  equally  obvious  that  these  two  necessary 
sanctities  of  thrift  and  dignity  are  bound  to 
come  into  collision  with  the  wordiness,  the  waste- 
fulness, and  the  perpetual  pleasure-seeking  of 
masculine  companionship.  Wise  women  allow 
for  the  thing ;  foolish  women  try  to  crush  it ; 
but  all  women  try  to  counteract  it,  and  they 
do  well.  In  many  a  home  all  round  us  at  this 
moment,  we  know  that  the  nursery  rhyme  is 
reversed.  The  queen  is  in  the  counting-house, 
counting  out  the  money.  The  king  is  in  the 
parlor,  eating  bread  and  honey.  But  it  must 
be  strictly  understood  that  the  king  has  cap- 
tured the  honey  in  some  heroic  wars.  The 
quarrel  can  be  found  in  moldering  Gothic  carv- 
ings and  in  crabbed  Greek  manuscripts.  In 
every  age,  in  every  land,  in  every  tribe  and 
190 


PEDANT     AND     SAVAGE 

village,  has  been  waged  the  great  sexual  war 
between  the  Private  House  and  the  Public 
House.  I  have  seen  a  collection  of  mediaeval 
English  poems,  divided  into  sections  such  as 
"Religious  Carols,"  "Drinking  Songs,"  and 
so  on ;  and  the  section  headed,  "  Poems  of 
Domestic  Life "  consisted  entirely  (literally, 
entirely)  of  the  complaints  of  husbands  who 
were  bullied  by  their  wives.  Though  the  Eng- 
lish was  archaic,  the  words  were  in  many  cases 
precisely  the  same  as  those  which  I  have  heard 
in  the  streets  and  public  houses  of  Battersea, 
protests  on  behalf  of  an  extension  of  time  and 
talk,  protests  against  the  nervous  impatience 
and  the  devouring  utilitarianism  of  the  female. 
Such,  I  say,  is  the  quarrel ;  it  can  never  be  any- 
thing but  a  quarrel ;  but  the  aim  of  all  morals 
and  all  society  is  to  keep  it  a  lovers'  quarrel. 


191 


THE   MODERN   SURRENDER   OF 
WOMAN 

BUT  in  this  corner  called  England,  at  this  end 
of  the  century,  there  has  happened  a  strange 
and  startling  thing.  Openly  and  to  all  ap- 
pearance, this  ancestral  conflict  has  silently 
and  abruptly  ended;  one  of  the  two  sexes  has 
suddenly  surrendered  to  the  other.  By  the  be- 
ginning of  the  twentieth  century,  within  the 
last  few  years,  the  woman  has  in  public  surren- 
dered to  the  man.  She  has  seriously  and  offi- 
cially owned  that  the  man  has  been  right  all 
along;  that  the  public  house  (or  Parliament) 
is  really  more  important  than  the  private  house ; 
that  politics  are  not  (as  woman  had  always 
maintained)  an  excuse  for  pots  of  beer,  but  are 
a  sacred  solemnity  to  which  new  female  wor- 
shipers may  kneel;  that  the  talkative  patrioti 
in  the  tavern  are  not  only  admirable  but  en- 


THE    MODERN    SURRENDER 

viable;  that  talk  is  not  a  waste  of  time,  and 
therefore  (as  a  consequence,  surely)  that  tav- 
erns are  not  a  waste  of  money.  All  we  men 
had  grown  used  to  our  wives  and  mothers,  and 
grandmothers,  and  great  aunts  all  pouring  a 
chorus  of  contempt  upon  our  hobbies  of  sport, 
drink  and  party  politics.  And  now  comes  Miss 
Pankhurst  with  tears  in  her  eyes,  owning  that 
all  the  women  were  wrong  and  all  the  men  were 
right ;  humbly  imploring  to  be  admitted  into 
so  much  as  an  outer  court,  from  which  she  may 
catch  a  glimpse  of  those  masculine  merits 
which  her  erring  sisters  had  so  thoughtlessly 
scorned. 

Now  this  development  naturally  perturbs 
and  even  paralyzes  us.  Males,  like  females, 
in  the  course  of  that  old  fight  between  the 
public  and  private  house,  had  indulged  in  over- 
statement and  extravagance,  feeling  that  they 
must  keep  up  their  end  of  the  see-saw.  We 
told  our  wives  that  Parliament  had  sat  late  on 
most  essential  business ;  but  it  never  crossed 
our  minds  that  our  wives  would  believe  it.  We 
193 


THE    MODERN    SURRENDER 

said  that  everyone  must  have  a  vote  in  the 
country ;  similarly  our  wives  said  that  no  one 
must  have  a  pipe  in  the  drawing-room.  In 
both  cases  the  idea  was  the  same.  "  It  does 
not  matter  much,  but  if  you  let  those  things 
slide  there  is  chaos."  We  said  that  Lord  Hug- 
gins  or  Mr.  Buggins  was  absolutely  necessary 
to  the  country.  We  knew  quite  well  that  noth- 
ing is  necessary  to  the  country  except  that  the 
men  should  be  men  and  the  women  women.  We 
knew  this ;  we  thought  the  women  knew  it  even 
more  clearly ;  and  we  thought  the  women  would 
say  it.  Suddenly,  without  warning,  the  women 
have  begun  to  say  all  the  nonsense  that  we  our- 
selves hardly  believed  when  we  said  it.  The 
solemnity  of  politics ;  the  necessity  of  votes ; 
the  necessity  of  Huggins  ;  the  necessity  of  Bug- 
gins;  all  these  flow  in  a  pellucid  stream  from 
the  lips  of  all  the  suffragette  speakers.  I  sup- 
pose in  every  fight,  however  old,  one  has  a 
vague  aspiration  to  conquer;  but  we  never 
wanted  to  conquer  women  so  completely  as  this. 
We  only  expected  that  they  might  leave  us  a 
194 


THE    MODERN    SURRENDER 

little  more  margin  for  our  nonsense;  we  never 
expected  that  they  would  accept  it  seriously 
as  sense.  Therefore  I  am  all  at  sea  about  the 
existing  situation;  I  scarcely  know  whether  to 
be  relieved  or  enraged  by  this  substitution  of 
the  feeble  platform  lecture  for  the  forcible  cur- 
tain-lecture. I  am  lost  without  the  trenchant 
and  candid  Mrs.  Caudle.  I  really  do  not  know 
what  to  do  with  the  prostrate  and  penitent 
Miss  Pankhurst.  This  surrender  of  the  modern 
woman  has  taken  us  all  so  much  by  surprise 
that  it  is  desirable  to  pause  a  moment,  and 
collect  our  wits  about  what  she  is  really  say- 
ing. 

As  I  have  already  remarked,  there  is  one 
very  simple  answer  to  all  this ;  these  are  not 
the  modern  women,  but  about  one  in  two  thou- 
sand of  the  modern  women.  This  fact  is  im- 
portant to  a  democrat ;  but  it  is  of  very  little 
importance  to  the  typically  modern  mind.  Both 
the  characteristic  modern  parties  believed  in 
a  government  by  the  few ;  the  only  difference 
is  whether  it  is  the  Conservative  few  or  Pro- 
195 


THE    MODERN    SURRENDER 

gressive  few.  It  might  be  put,  somewhat 
coarsely  perhaps,  by  saying  that  one  believes 
in  any  minority  that  is  rich  and  the  other  in 
any  minority  that  is  mad.  But  in  this  state 
of  things  the  democratic  argument  obviously 
falls  out  for  the  moment ;  and  we  are  bound  to 
take  the  prominent  minority,  merely  because  it 
is  prominent.  Let  us  eliminate  altogether 
from  our  minds  the  thousands  of  women  who 
detest  this  cause,  and  the  millions  of  women 
who  have  hardly  heard  of  it.  Let  us  concede 
that  the  English  people  itself  is  not  and  will 
not  be  for  a  very  long  time  within  the  sphere 
of  practical  politics.  Let  us  confine  ourselves 
to  saying  that  these  particular  women  want 
a  vote  and  to  asking  themselves  what  a  vote  is. 
If  we  ask  these  ladies  ourselves  what  a  vote  is, 
we  shall  get  a  very  vague  reply.  It  is  the  only 
question,  as  a  rule,  for  which  they  are  not  pre- 
pared. For  the  truth  is  that  they  go  mainly 
by  precedent ;  by  the  mere  fact  that  men  have 
votes  already.  So  far  from  being  a  mutinous 
movement,  it  is  really  a  very  Conservative  one ; 
196 


THE    MODERN    SURRENDER 

it  is  in  the  narrowest  rut  of  the  British  Con- 
stitution. Let  us  take  a  little  wider  and  freer 
sweep  of  thought  and  ask  ourselves  what  is  the 
ultimate  point  and  meaning  of  this  odd  busi- 
ness called  voting. 


197 


VIII 

THE  BRAND  OF  THE  FLEUR-DE-LIS 

SEEMINGLY  from  the  dawn  of  man  all  nations 
have  had  governments ;  and  all  nations  have 
been  ashamed  of  them.  Nothing  is  more  openly 
fallacious  than  to  fancy  that  in  ruder  or 
simpler  ages  ruling,  judging  and  punishing 
appeared  perfectly  innocent  and  dignified. 
These  things  were  always  regarded  as  the 
penalties  of  the  Fall;  as  part  of  the  humilia- 
tion of  mankind,  as  bad  in  themselves.  That 
the  king  can  do  no  wrong  was  never  anything 
but  a  legal  fiction ;  and  it  is  a  legal  fiction  still. 
The  doctrine  of  Divine  Right  was  not  a  piece 
of  idealism,  but  rather  a  piece  of  realism,  a 
practical  way  of  ruling  amid  the  ruin  of  hu- 
manity ;  a  very  pragmatist  piece  of  faith.  The 
religious  basis  of  government  was  not  so  much 
that  people  put  their  trust  in  princes,  as  that 
they  did  not  put  their  trust  in  any  child  of 
198 


BRAND     OF     FLEUR-DE-LIS 

man.  It  was  so  with  all  the  ugly  institutions 
which  disfigure  human  history.  Torture  and 
slavery  were  never  talked  of  as  good  things; 
they  were  always  talked  of  as  necessary  evils. 
A  pagan  spoke  of  one  man  owning  ten  slaves 
just  as  a  modern  business  man  speaks  of  one 
merchant  sacking  ten  clerks:  "It's  very  horri- 
ble; but  how  else  can  society  be  conducted?" 
A  mediaeval  scholastic  regarded  the  possibility 
of  a  man  being  burned  to  death  just  as  a  mod- 
ern business  man  regards  the  possibility  of  a 
man  being  starved  to  death :  "  It  is  a  shock- 
ing torture;  but  can  you  organize  a  painless 
world?"  It  is  possible  that  a  future  society 
may  find  a  way  of  doing  without  the  question 
by  hunger  as  we  have  done  without  the  ques- 
tion by  fire.  It  is  equally  possible,  for  the  mat- 
ter of  that,  that  a  future  society  may  re- 
establish legal  torture  with  the  whole  appara- 
tus of  rack  and  fagot.  The  most  modern 
of  countries,  America,  has  introduced  with  a 
Tague  savor  of  science,  a  method  which  it 
calls  "  the  third  degree."  This  is  simply  the 
199 


BRAND     OF     FLEUR-DE-LIS 

extortion  of  secrets  by  nervous  fatigue;  which 
is  surely  uncommonly  close  to  their  extortion 
(by  bodily  pain.  And  this  is  legal  and  scien-1 
tific  America.  Amateur  ordinary  America,  of 
course,  simply  burns  people  alive  in  broad  day- 
light, as  they  did  in  the  Reformation  Wars; 
But  though  some  punishments  are  more  in- 
human than  others  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
humane  punishment.  As  long  as  nineteen  men 
claim  the  right  in  any  sense  or  shape  to  take 
hold  of  the  twentieth  man  and  make  him  even 
mildly  uncomfortable,  so  long  the  whole  pro- 
ceeding must  be  a  humiliating  one  for  all  con- 
cerned. And  the  proof  of  how  poignantly 
men  have  always  felt  this  lies  in  the  fact  that 
the  headsman  and  the  hangman,  the  jailors 
and  the  torturers,  were  always  regarded  not 
merely  with  fear  but  with  contempt;  while  all 
kinds  of  careless  smiters,  bankrupt  knights  and 
swashbucklers  and  outlaws,  were  regarded  with 
indulgence  or  even  admiration.  To  kill  a  man 
lawlessly  was  pardoned.  To  kill  a  man  law- 
fully was  unpardonable.  The  most  bare-faced 
200 


BRAND    OF    FLEUR-DE-LIS 

duelist  might  almost    brandish    his     weapon. 
But  the  executioner  was  always  masked. 

This  is  the  first  essential  element  in  gov- 
ernment ;  coercion ;  a  necessary  but  not  a  noble 
element.  I  may  remark  in  passing  that  when 
people  say  that  government  rests  on  force  they 
give  an  admirable  instance  of  the  foggy  and 
muddled  cynicism  of  modernity.  Government 
does  not  rest  on  force.  Government  is  force; 
it  rests  on  consent  or  a  conception  of  justice. 
A  king  or  a  community  holding  a  certain 
thing  to  be  abnormal,  evil,  uses  the  general 
strength  to  crush  it  out;  the  strength  is  his 
tool,  but  the  belief  is  his  only  sanction.  You 
might  as  well  say  that  glass  is  the  real  reason 
for  telescopes.  But  arising  from  whatever 
reason  the  act  of  government  is  coercive  and 
is  burdened  with  all  the  coarse  and  painful 
qualities  of  coercion.  And  if  anyone  asks  what 
is  the  use  of  insisting  on  the  ugliness  of  this 
task  of  state  violence  since  all  mankind  is  con- 
demned to  employ  it,  I  have  a  simple  answer 
to  that.  It  would  be  useless  to  insist  on  it  if 
201 


BRAND     OF     FLEUR-DE-LIS 

all  humanity  were  condemned  to  it.  But  it  is 
not  irrelevant  to  insist  on  its  ugliness  so  long 
as  half  of  humanity  is  kept  out  of  it. 

All  government  then  is  coercive;  we  happen 
to  have  created  a  government  which  is  not  only 
coercive,  but  collective.  There  are  only  two 
kinds  of  government,  as  I  have  already  said, 
the  despotic  and  the  democratic.  Aristocracy 
is  not  a  government,  it  is  a  riot ;  that  most  ef- 
fective kind  of  riot,  a  riot  of  the  rich.  The 
most  intelligent  apologists  of  aristocracy, 
sophists  like  Burke  and  Nietzsche,  have  never 
claimed  for  aristocracy  any  virtues  but  the 
virtues  of  a  riot,  the  accidental  virtues, 
courage,  variety  and  adventure.  There  is  no 
case  anywhere  of  aristocracy  having  estab- 
lished a  universal  and  applicable  order, 
as  despots  and  democracies  have  often  done; 
as  the  last  Caesars  created  the  Roman  law, 
as  the  last  Jacobins  created  the  Code  Na- 
poleon. With  the  first  of  these  elemen- 
tary forms  of  government,  that  of  the  king 
or  chieftain,  we  are  not  in  this  matter  of  the 
202 


BRAND^  OF    FLEUR-DE-LIS 

sexes  immediately  concerned.  We  shall  return 
to  it  later  when  we  remark  how  differently 
mankind  has  dealt  with  female  claims  in  the 
despotic  as  against  the  democratic  field.  But 
for  the  moment  the  essential  point  is  that  in 
self-governing  countries  this  coercion  of  crim- 
inals is  a  collective  coercion.  The  abnormal 
person  is  theoreticallly  thumped  by  a  million 
fists  and  kicked  by  a  million  feet.  If  a  man  is 
flogged  we  all  flogged  him ;  if  a  man  is  hanged, 
we  all  hanged  him.  That  is  the  only  possible 
meaning  of  democracy,  which  can  give  any 
meaning  to  the  first  two  syllables  and  also  to 
the  last  two.  In  this  sense  each  citizen  has 
the  high  responsibility  of  a  rioter.  Every 
statute  is  a  declaration  of  war,  to  be  backed 
by  arms.  Every  tribunal  is  a  revolutionary 
tribunal.  In  a  republic  all  punishment  is  as 
sacred  and  solemn  as  lynching. 


203 


IX 

SINCERITY     AND     THE     GALLOWS 

WHEN,  therefore,  it  is  said  that  the  tradition 
against  Female  Suffrage  keeps  women  out  of 
activity,  social  influence  and  citizenship,  let  us 
a  little  more  soberly  and  strictly  ask  ourselves 
what  it  actually  does  keep  her  out  of.  It  does 
definitely  keep  her  out  of  the  collective  act  of 
coercion ;  the  act  of  punishment  by  a  mob.  The 
human  tradition  does  say  that,  if  twenty  men 
hang  a  man  from  a  tree  or  a  lamp-post,  they 
shall  be  twenty  men  and  not  women.  Now  I 
do  not  think  any  reasonable  Suffragist  will 
deny  that  exclusion  from  this  function,  to  say 
the  least  of  it,  might  be  maintained  to  be  a 
protection  as  well  as  a  veto.  No  candid  person 
will  wholly  dismiss  the  proposition  that  the 
idea  of  having  a  Lord  Chancellor  but  not  a 
Lady  Chancellor  may  at  least  be  connected 
with  the  idea  of  having  a  headsman  but  not  a 
204 


SINCERITY    AND    GALLOWS 

beadswoman,  a  hangman  but  not  a  hangwoman. 
Nor  will  it  be  adequate  to  answer  (as  is  so 
often  answered  to  this  contention)  that  in  mod- 
ern civilization  women  would  not  really  be  re- 
quired to  capture,  to  sentence,  or  to  slay ;  that 
all  this  is  done  indirectly,  that  specialists  kill 
our  criminals  as  they  kill  our  cattle.  To  urge 
this  is  not  to  urge  the  reality  of  the  vote,  but 
to  urge  its  unreality.  Democracy  was  meant 
to  be  a  more  direct  way  of  ruling,  not  a  more 
indirect  way ;  and  if  we  do  not  feel  that  we 
are  all  jailers,  so  much  the  worse  for  us,  and 
for  the  prisoners.  If  it  is  really  an  unwomanly 
thing  to  lock  up  a  robber  or  a  tyrant,  it  ought 
to  be  no  softening  of  the  situation  that  the 
woman  does  not  feel  as  if  she  were  doing  the 
thing  that  she  certainly  is  doing.  It  is  bad 
enough  that  men  can  only  associate  on  paper 
who  could  once  associate  in  the  street;  it  is  bad 
enough  that  men  have  made  a  vote  very  much 
of  a  fiction.  It  is  much  worse  that  a  great 
class  should  claim  the  vote  because  it  is  a  fic- 
tion, who  would  be  sickened  by  it  if  it  were  a 
205 


SINCERITY    AND    GALLOWS 

fact.  If  votes  for  women  do  not  mean  mobs 
for  women  they  do  not  mean  what  they  were 
meant  to  mean.  A  woman  can  make  a  cross 
on  a  paper  as  well  as  a  man;  a  child  could  do 
it  as  well  as  a  woman ;  and  a  chimpanzee  after 
a  few  lessons  could  do  it  as  well  as  a  child. 
But  nobody  ought  to  regard  it  merely  as  mak- 
ing a  cross  on  paper;  everyone  ought  to  re- 
gard it  as  what  it  ultimately  is,  branding  the 
fleur-de-lis,  marking  the  broad  arrow,  signing 
the  death  warrant.  Both  men  and  women 
ought  to  face  more  fully  the  things  they  do 
or  cause  to  be  done ;  face  them  or  leave  off  do- 
ing them. 

On  that  disastrous  day  when  public  execu- 
tions were  abolished,  private  executions  were 
renewed  and  ratified,  perhaps  forever.  Things 
grossly  unsuited  to  the  moral  sentiment  of  a 
society  cannot  be  safely  done  in  broad  day- 
light ;  but  I  see  no  reason  why  we  should  not 
still  be  roasting  heretics  alive,  in  a  private 
room.  It  is  very  likely  (to  speak  in  the  man- 
ner foolishly  called  Irish)  that  if  there  were 
206 


SINCERITY    AND    GALLOWS 

public  executions  there  would  be  no  executions. 
The  old  open-air  punishments,  the  pillory  and 
the  gibbet,  at  least  fixed  responsibility  upon 
the  law ;  and  in  actual  practice  they  gave  the 
mob  an  opportunity  of  throwing  roses  as  well 
as  rotten  eggs ;  of  crying  "  Hosannah  "  as  well 
as  "  Crucify."  But  I  do  not  like  the  public 
executioner  being  turned  into  the  private  ex- 
ecutioner. I  think  it  is  a  crooked,  oriental, 
sinister  sort  of  business,  and  smells  of  the  harem 
and  the  divan  rather  than  of  the  forum  and 
the  market  place.  In  modern  times  the  official 
has  lost  all  the  social  honor  and  dignity  of 
the  common  hangman.  He  is  only  the  bearer 
of  the  bowstring. 

Here,  however,  I  suggest  a  plea  for  a  brutal 
publicity  only  in  order  to  emphasize  the  fact 
that  it  is  this  brutal  publicity  and  nothing  else 
from  which  women  have  been  excluded.  I  also 
say  it  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  the  mere 
modern  veiling  of  the  brutality  does  not  make 
the  situation  different,  unless  we  openly  say 
that  we  are  giving  the  suffrage,  not  because  it 
207 


SINCERITY    AND    GALLOWS 

is  power,  but  because  it  is  not;  or  in  other 
words,  that  women  are  not  so  much  to  vote 
as  to  play  voting.  No  suffragist,  I  suppose, 
will  take  up  that  position ;  and  few  suffragists 
will  wholly  deny  that  this  human  necessity  of 
pains  and  penalties  is  an  ugly,  humiliating 
business,  and  that  good  motives  as  well  as  bad 
may  have  helped  to  keep  women  out  of  it. 
More  than  once  I  have  remarked  in  these  pages 
that  female  limitations  may  be  the  limits  of 
a  temple  as  well  as  of  a  prison,  the  disabilities 
of  a  priest  and  not  of  a  pariah.  I  noted  it, 
I  think,  in  the  case  of  the  pontifical  feminine 
dress.  In  the  same  way  it  is  not  evidently  ir- 
rational, if  men  decided  that  a  woman,  like  a 
priest,  must  not  be  a  shedder  of  blood. 


208 


X 

THE     HIGHER    ANARCHY 

BUT  there  is  a  further  fact;  forgotten  also 
because  we  moderns  forget  that  there  is  a 
female  point  of  view.  The  woman's  wisdom 
stands  partly,  not  only  for  a  wholesome  hesi- 
tation about  punishment,  but  even  for  a  whole- 
some hesitation  about  absolute  rules.  There 
was  something  feminine  and  perversely  true  in 
that  phrase  of  Wilde's,  that  people  should  not 
be  treated  as  the  rule,  but  all  of  them  as  ex- 
ceptions. Made  by  a  man  the  remark  was  a 
little  effeminate ;  for  Wilde  did  lack  the  mascu- 
line power  of  dogma  and  of  democratic  co- 
operation. But  if  a  woman  had  said  it  it 
would  have  been  simply  true;  a  woman  does 
treat  each  person  as  a  peculiar  person.  In 
other  words,  she  stands  for  Anarchy;  a  very 
ancient  and  arguable  philosophy;  not  anarchy 
in  the  sense  of  having  no  customs  in  one's  life 
209 


THE     HIGHER    ANARCHY 

(which  is  inconceivable),  but  anarchy  in  the 
sense  of  having  no  rules  for  one's  mind.  To 
her,  almost  certainly,  are  due  all  those  working 
traditions  that  cannot  be  found  in  books,  espe- 
cially those  of  education ;  it  was  she  who  first 
gave  a  child  a  stuffed  stocking  for  being  good 
or  stood  him  in  the  corner  for  being  naughty. 
This  unclassified  knowledge  is  sometimes  called 
rule  of  thumb  and  sometimes  motherwit.  The 
last  phrase  suggests  the  whole  truth,  for  none 
ever  called  it  fatherwit. 

Now  anarchy  is  only  tact  when  it  works 
badly.  Tact  is  only  anarchy  when  it  works 
well.  And  we  ought  to  realize  that  in  one  half 
of  the  world — the  private  house — it  does  work 
well.  We  modern  men  are  perpetually  forget- 
ting that  the  case  for  clear  rules  and  crude 
penalties  is  not  self-evident,  that  there  is  a 
great  deal  to  be  said  for  the  benevolent  law- 
lessness of  the  autocrat,  especially  on  a  small 
scale;  in  short,  that  government  is  only  one 
side  of  life.  The  other  half  is  called  Society, 
in  which  women  are  admittedly  dominant.  And 
310 


THE     HIGHER     ANARCHY 

they  have  always  been  ready  to  maintain  that 
their  kingdom  is  better  governed  than  ours, 
because  (in  the  logical  and  legal  sense)  it  is 
not  governed  at  all.  "Whenever  you  have  a 
real  difficulty,"  they  say,  "  when  a  boy  is 
bumptious  or  an  aunt  is  stingy,  when  a  silly 
girl  will  marry  somebody,  or  a  wicked  man 
won't  marry  somebody,  all  your  lumbering  Ro- 
man Law  and  British  Constitution  come  to  a 
standstill.  A  snub  from  a  duchess  or  a  slang- 
ing from  a  fish-wife  are  much  more  likely  to 
put  things  straight."  So,  at  least,  rang  the 
ancient  female  challenge  down  the  ages  until 
the  recent  female  capitulation.  So  streamed 
the  red  standard  of  the  higher  anarchy  until 
Miss  Pankhurst  hoisted  the  white  flag. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  the  modern 
world  has  done  deep  treason  to  the  eternal  in- 
tellect by  believing  in  the  swing  of  the  pendu- 
lum. A  man  must  be  dead  before  he  swings. 
It  has  substituted  an  idea  of  fatalistic  alter- 
nation for  the  mediaeval  freedom  of  the  soul 
seeking  truth.  All  modern  thinkers  are  reac- 


THE     HIGHER     ANARCHY 

tionaries ;  for  their  thought  is  always  a  reaction 
from  what  went  before.  When  you  meet  a  mod- 
ern man  he  is  always  coming  from  a  place,  not 
going  to  it.  Thus,  mankind  has  in  nearly  all 
places  and  periods  seen  that  there  is  a  soul 
and  a  body  as  plainly  as  that  there  is  a  sun 
and  moon.  But  because  a  narrow  Protestant 
sect  called  Materialists  declared  for  a  short 
time  that  there  was  no  soul,  another  narrow- 
Protestant  sect  called  Christian  Science  is  now 
maintaining  that  there  is  no  body.  Now  just 
in  the  same  way  the  unreasonable  neglect  of 
government  by  the  Manchester  School  has  pro- 
duced, not  a  reasonable  regard  for  government, 
but  an  unreasonable  neglect  of  everything 
else.  So  that  to  hear  people  talk  to-day  one 
would  fancy  that  every  important  human  func- 
tion must  be  organized  and  avenged  by  law; 
that  all  education  must  be  state  education,  and 
all  employment  state  employment ;  that  every- 
body and  everything  must  be  brought  to  the 
foot  of  the  august  and  prehistoric  gibbet. 
But  a  somewhat  more  liberal  and  sympathetic 


THE     HIGHER     ANARCHY 

examination  of  mankind  will  convince  us  that 
the  cross  is  even  older  than  the  gibbet,  that 
voluntary  suffering  was  before  and  independ- 
ence of  compulsory;  and  in  short  that  in  most 
important  matters  a  man  has  always  been  free 
to  ruin  himself  if  he  chose.  The  huge  funda- 
mental function  upon  which  all  anthropology 
turns,  that  of  sex  and  childbirth,  has  never 
been  inside  the  political  state,  but  always  out- 
side it.  The  state  concerned  itself  with  the 
trivial  question  of  killing  people,  but  wisely 
left  alone  the  whole  business  of  getting  them 
born.  A  Eugenist  might  indeed  plausibly  say 
that  the  government  is  an  absent-minded  and 
inconsistent  person  who  occupies  himself  with 
providing  for  the  old  age  of  people  who  have 
never  been  infants.  I  will  not  deal  here  in  any 
detail  with  the  fact  that  some  Eugenists  have 
in  our  time  made  the  maniacal  answer  that  the 
police  ought  to  control  marriage  and  birth  as 
they  control  labor  and  death.  Except  for  this 
inhuman  handful  (with  whom  I  regret  to  say 
I  shall  have  to  deal  later)  all  the  Eugenists  I 


THE     HIGHER     ANARCHY 

know  divide  themselves  into  two  sections:  in- 
genious people  who  once  meant  this,  and  rather 
bewildered  people  who  swear  they  never  meant 
it — nor  anything  else.  But  if  it  be  conceded 
(by  a  breezier  estimate  of  men)  that  they  do 
mostly  desire  marriage  to  remain  free  from 
government,  it  does  not  follow  that  they  desire 
it  to  remain  free  from  everything.  If  man  does 
not  control  the  marriage  market  by  law,  is  it 
controlled  at  all?  Surely  the  answer  is  broadly 
that  man  does  not  control  the  marriage  market 
by  law,  but  that  woman  does  control  it  by  sym- 
pathy and  prejudice.  There  was  until  lately 
a  law  forbidding  a  man  to  marry  his  deceased 
wife's  sister;  yet  the  thing  happened  con- 
stantly. There  was  no  law  forbidding  a  man  to 
marry  his  deceased  wife's  scullery-maid;  yet  it 
did  not  happen  nearly  so  often.  It  did  not 
happen  because  the  marriage  market  is  man- 
aged in  the  spirit  and  by  the  authority  of 
women;  and  women  are  generally  conservative 
where  classes  are  concerned.  It  is  the  same 
with  that  system  of  exclusiveness  by  which 


THE    HIGHER    ANARCHY 

ladies  have  so  often  contrived  (as  by  a  process 
of  elimination)  to  prevent  the  marriages  that 
they  did  not  want  and  even  sometimes  to  pro- 
cure those  that  they  did.  There  is  no  need 
of  the  broad  arrow  and  the  fleur-de-lis,  the 
turnkey's  chains  or  the  hangman's  halter. 
You  need  not  strangle  a  man  if  you  can  silence 
him.  The  branded  shoulder  is  less  effective 
and  final  than  the  cold  shoulder;  and  you  need 
not  trouble  to  lock  a  man  in  when  you  can 
lock  him  out. 

The  same,  of  course,  is  true  of  the  colossal 
architecture  which  we  call  infant  education: 
an  architecture  reared  wholly  by  women. 
Nothing  can  ever  overcome  that  one  enormous 
sex  superiority,  that  even  the  male  child  is  born 
closer  to  his  mother  than  to  his  father.  No 
one,  staring  at  that  frightful  female  privilege, 
can  quite  believe  in  the  equality  of  the  sexes. 
Here  and  there  we  read  of  a  girl  brought  up 
like  a  torn-boy;  but  every  boy  is  brought  up 
like  a  tame  girl.  The  flesh  and  spirit  of  fem- 
ininity surround  him  from  the  first  like  the 
215 


THE     HIGHER     ANARCHY 

four  walls  of  a  house ;  and  even  the  vaguest  or 
most  brutal  man  has  been  womanized  by  be- 
ing born.  Man  that  is  born  of  a  woman  has 
short  days  and  full  of  misery ;  but  nobody  can 
picture  the  obscenity  and  bestial  tragedy  that 
would  belong  to  such  a  monster  as  man  that 
was  born  of  a  man. 


216 


XI 

THE   QUEEN   AND   THE   SUFFRA- 
GETTES 

BUT,  indeed,  with  this  educational  matter  I 
must  of  necessity  embroil  myself  later.  The 
fourth  section  of  the  discussion  is  supposed  to 
be  about  the  child,  but  I  think  it  will  be  mostly 
about  the  mother.  In  this  place  I  have  system- 
atically insisted  on  the  large  part  of  life  that  is 
governed,  not  by  man  with  his  vote,  but  by 
woman  with  her  voice,  or  more  often,  with  her 
horrible  silence.  Only  one  thing  remains  to  be 
added.  In  a  sprawling  and  explanatory  style 
has  been  traced  out  the  idea  that  government 
is  ultimately  coercion,  that  coercion  must  mean 
cold  definitions  as  well  as  cruel  consequences, 
and  that  therefore  there  is  something  to  be 
said  for  the  old  human  habit  of  keeping  one- 
half  of  humanity  out  of  so  harsh  and  dirty  a 
business.  But  the  case  is  stronger  still. 
217 


QUEEN  AND  SUFFRAGETTES 

Voting  is  not  only  coercion,  but  collective 
coercion.  I  think  Queen  Victoria  would  have 
been  yet  more  popular  and  satisfying  if  she 
had  never  signed  a  death  warrant.  I  think 
Queen  Elizabeth  would  have  stood  out  as  more 
solid  and  splendid  in  history  if  she  had  not 
earned  (among  those  who  happen  to  know  her 
history)  the  nickname  of  Bloody  Bess.  I  think, 
in  short,  that  the  great  historic  woman  is  more 
herself  when  she  is  persuasive  rather  than  co- 
ercive. But  I  feel  all  mankind  behind  me  when 
I  say  that  if  a  woman  has  this  power  it  should 
be  despotic  power — not  democratic  power. 
There  is  a  much  stronger  historic  argument 
for  giving  Miss  Pankhurst  a  throne  than  for 
giving  her  a  vote.  She  might  have  a  crown,  or 
at  least  a  coronet,  like  so  many  of  her  sup- 
porters; for  these  old  powers  are  purely  per- 
sonal and  therefore  female.  Miss  Pankhurst 
as  a  despot  might  be  as  virtuous  as  Queen 
Victoria,  and  she  certainly  would  find  it  dif- 
ficult to  be  as  wicked  as  Queen  Bess ;  but  the 
point  is  that,  good  or  bad,  she  would  be  ir- 
218 


QUEEN  AND  SUFFRAGETTES 

responsible — she  would  not  be  governed  by  a 
rule  and  by  a  ruler.  There  are  only  two 
ways  of  governing:  by  a  rule  and  by  a  ruler. 
And  it  is  seriously  true  to  say  of  a  woman,  in 
education  and  domesticity,  that  the  freedom 
of  the  autocrat  appears  to  be  necessary  to  her. 
She  is  never  responsible  until  she  is  irrespon- 
sible. In  case  this  sounds  like  an  idle  contra- 
diction, I  confidently  appeal  to  the  cold  facts 
of  history.  Almost  every  despotic  or  oli- 
garchic state  has  admitted  women  to  its  privi- 
leges. Scarcely  one  democratic  state  has  ever 
admitted  them  to  its  rights.  The  reason  is 
very  simple:  that  something  female  is  endan- 
gered by  violence;  but  endangered  much  more 
by  the  violence  of  the  crowd.  In  short,  one 
Pankhurst  is  an  exception,  but  a  thousand 
Pankhursts  are  a  nightmare,  a  Bacchic  orgie, 
a  Witches'  Sabbath.  For  in  all  legends  men 
have  thought  of  women  as  sublime  separately 
but  horrible  in  a  herd. 


219 


XII 

THE    MODERN    SLAVE 

Now  I  have  only  taken  the  test  case  of  Female 
Suffrage  because  it  is  topical  and  concrete;  it 
is  not  of  great  moment  for  me  as  a  political 
proposal.  I  can  quite  imagine  anyone  sub- 
stantially agreeing  with  my  view  of  woman  as 
universalist  and  autocrat  in  a  limited  area ;  and 
still  thinking  that  she  would  be  none  the  worse 
for  a  ballot  paper.  The  real  question  is 
whether  this  old  ideal  of  woman  as  the  great 
amateur  is  admitted  or  not.  There  are  many 
modern  things  which  threaten  it  much  more 
than  suffragism ;  notably  the  increase  of  self- 
supporting  women,  even  in  the  most  severe  or 
the  most  squalid  employments.  If  there  be 
something  against  nature  in  the  idea  of  a  horde 
of  wild  women  governing,  there  is  something 
truly  intolerable  in  the  idea  of  a  herd  of  tame 
women  being  governed.  And  there  are  ele- 
220 


THE     MODERN     SLAVE 

ments  in  human  psychology  that  make  this  sit- 
uation particularly  poignant  or  ignominious. 
The  ugly  exactitudes  of  business,  the  bells  and 
clocks,  the  fixed  hours  and  rigid  departments, 
were  all  meant  for  the  male:  who,  as  a  rule, 
can  only  do  one  thing  and  can  only  with  the 
greatest  difficulty  be  induced  to  do  that.  If 
clerks  do  not  try  to  shirk  their  work,  our  whole 
great  commercial  system  breaks  down.  It  is 
breaking  down,  under  the  inroad  of  women 
who  are  adopting  the  unprecedented  and  im- 
possible course  of  taking  the  system  seriously 
and  doing  it  well.  Their  very  efficiency  is  the 
definition  of  their  slavery.  It  is  generally  a 
very  bad  sign  when  one  is  trusted  very  much 
by  one's  employers.  And  if  the  evasive  clerks 
have  a  look  of  being  blackguards,  the  earnest 
ladies  are  often  something  very  like  blacklegs. 
But  the  more  immediate  point  is  that  the  mod- 
ern working  woman  bears  a  double  burden,  for 
she  endures  both  the  grinding  officialism  of  the 
new  office  and  the  distracting  scrupulosity  of 
the  old  home.  Few  men  understand  what  con- 


THE     MODERN     SLAVE 

scientiousness  is.  They  understand  duty,  which 
generally  means  one  duty ;  but  conscientious- 
ness is  the  duty  of  the  universalist.  It  is  lim- 
ited by  no  work  days  or  holidays ;  it  is  a  law- 
less, limitless,  devouring  decorum.  If  women 
are  to  be  subjected  to  the  dull  rule  of  com- 
merce, we  must  find  some  way  of  emancipating 
them  from  the  wild  rule  of  conscience.  But 
I  rather  fancy  you  will  find  it  easier  to  leave 
the  conscience  and  knock  off  the  commerce.  As 
it  is,  the  modern  clerk  or  secretary  exhausts 
herself  to  put  one  thing  straight  in  the  ledger 
and  then  goes  home  to  put  everything  straight 
in  the  house. 

This  condition  (described  by  some  as  eman- 
cipated) is  at  least  the  reverse  of  my  ideal. 
I  would  give  woman,  not  more  rights,  but  more 
privileges.  Instead  of  sending  her  to  seek  such 
freedom  as  notoriously  prevails  in  banks  and 
factories,  I  would  design  specially  a  house  in 
which  she  can  be  free.  And  with  that  we  come 
to  the  last  point  of  all;  the  point  at  which  we 
can  perceive  the  needs  of  women,  like  the  rights 
222 


THE     MODERN     SLAVE 

of  men,   stopped    and   falsified  by   something 
which  it  is  the  object  of  this  book  to  expose. 

The  Feminist  (which  means,  I  think,  one 
who  dislikes  the  chief  feminine  characteristics) 
has  heard  my  loose  monologue,  bursting  all  the 
time  with  one  pent-up  protest.  At  this  point 
he  will  break  out  and  say,  "  But  what  are  we 
to  do?  There  is  modern  commerce  and  its 
clerks ;  there  is  the  modern  family  with  its  un- 
married daughters ;  specialism  is  expected 
everywhere ;  female  thrift  and  conscientious- 
ness are  demanded  and  supplied.  What  does 
it  matter  whether  we  should  in  the  abstract 
prefer  the  old  human  and  housekeeping  wo- 
man ;  we  might  prefer  the  Garden  of  Eden. 
But  since  women  have  trades  they  ought  to 
have  trades  unions.  Since  women  work  in 
factories,  they  ought  to  vote  on  factory-acts. 
If  they  are  unmarried  they  must  be  commer- 
cial ;  if  they  are  commercial  they  must  be  polit- 
ical. We  must  have  new  rules  for  a  new 
world — even  if  it  be  not  a  better  one."  I  said 
to  a  Feminist  once:  "The  question  is  not 
223 


THE     MODERN     SLAVE 

whether  women  are  good  enough  for  votes:  it 
is  whether  votes  are  good  enough  for  women." 
He  only  answered :  "  Ah,  you  go  and  say  that 
to  the  women  chain-makers  on  Cradley  Heath." 
Now  this  is  the  attitude  which  I  attack.  It 
is  the  huge  heresy  of  Precedent.  It  is  the  view 
that  because  we  have  got  into  a  mess  we  must 
grow  messier  to  suit  it ;  that  because  we  have 
taken  a  wrong  turn  some  time  ago  we  must  go 
forward  and  not  backwards;  that  because  we 
have  lost  our  way  we  must  lose  our  map  also; 
and  because  we  have  missed  our  ideal,  we  must 
forget  it.  There  are  numbers  of  excellent  peo- 
ple who  do  not  think  votes  unfeminine;  and 
there  may  be  enthusiasts  for  our  beautiful  mod- 
ern industry  who  do  not  think  factories  un- 
feminine. But  if  these  things  are  unfeminine 
it  is  no  answer  to  say  that  they  fit  into  each 
other.  I  am  not  satisfied  with  the  statement 
that  my  daughter  must  have  unwomanly  powers 
because  she  has  unwomanly  wrongs.  Industrial 
soot  and  political  printer's  ink  are  two  blacks 
which  do  not  make  a  white.  Most  of  the  Fern- 


THE     MODERN     SLAVE 

inists  would  probably  agree  with  me  that 
womanhood  is  under  shameful  tyranny  in  the 
shops  and  mills.  But  I  want  to  destroy  the 
tyranny.  They  want  to  destroy  the  woman- 
hood. That  is  the  only  difference. 

Whether  we  can  recover  the  clear  vision  of 
woman  as  a  tower  with  many  windows,  the 
fixed  eternal  feminine  from  which  her  sons,  the 
specialists,  go  forth;  whether  we  can  preserve 
the  tradition  of  a  central  thing  which  is  even 
more  human  than  democracy  and  even  more 
practical  than  politics;  whether,  in  a  word,  it 
is  possible  to  re-establish  the  family,  freed  from 
the  filthy  cynicism  and  cruelty  of  the  commer- 
cial epoch,  I  shall  discuss  in  the  last  section  of 
this  book.  But  meanwhile  do  not  talk  to  me 
about  the  poor  chain-makers  o>n  Cradley 
Heath.  I  know  all  about  them  and  what  they 
are  doing.  They  are  engaged  in  a  very  wide- 
spread and  flourishing  industry  of  the  present 
age.  They  are  making  chains. 


EDUCATION:    OR    THE    MISTAKE 
ABOUT    THE    CHILD 


THE    CALVINISM    OF    TO-DAY 

WHEN  1  wrote  a  little  volume  on  my  friend 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  it  is  needless  to  say  that  he 
reviewed  it.  I  naturally  felt  tempted  to  an- 
swer and  to  criticise  the  book  from  the  same 
disinterested  and  impartial  standpoint  from 
which  Mr.  Shaw  had  criticised  the  subject  of 
it.  I  was  not  withheld  by  any  feeling  that  the 
joke  was  getting  a  little  obvious;  for  an  ob- 
vious joke  is  only  a  successful  joke;  it  is  only 
the  unsuccessful  clowns  who  comfort  themselves 
with  being  subtle.  The  real  reason  why  I  did 
not  answer  Mr.  Shaw's  amusing  attack  was 
this:  that  one  simple  phrase  in  it  surrendered 
to  me  all  that  I  have  ever  wanted,  or  could 
want  from  him  to  all  eternity.  I  told  Mr. 
Shaw  (in  substance)  that  he  was  a  charming 
and  clever  fellow,  but  a  common  Calvinist.  He 
229 


CALVINISM     OF     TO-DAY 

admitted  that  this  was  true;  and  there  (so  far 
as  I  am  concerned)  is  an  end  of  the  matter. 
He  said  that,  of  course,  Calvin  was  quite  right 
in  holding  that  "  if  once  a  man  is  born  it  is 
too  late  to  damn  or  save  him."  That  is  the 
fundamental  and  subterranean  secret;  that  is 
the  last  lie  in  hell. 

The  difference  between  Puritanism  and 
Catholicism  is  not  about  whether  some  priestly 
word  or  gesture  is  significant  and  sacred.  It 
is  about  whether  any  word  or  gesture  is  signifi- 
cant and  sacred.  To  the  Catholic  every  other 
daily  act  is  a  dramatic  dedication  to  the  service 
of  good  or  of  evil.  To  the  Calvinist  no  act 
can  have  that  sort  of  solemnity,  because  the 
person  doing  it  has  been  dedicated  from  eter- 
nity, and  is  merely  filling  up  his  time  until  the 
crack  of  doom.  The  difference  is  something 
subtler  than  plum-puddings  or  private  theatri- 
cals ;  the  difference  is  that  to  a  Christian  of 
my  kind  this  short  earthly  life  is  intensely 
thrilling  and  precious ;  to  a  Calvinist  like  Mr. 
230 


CALVINISM     OF     TO-DAY 

Shaw  it  is  confessedly  automatic  and  uninter- 
esting. To  me  these  threescore  years  and  ten 
are  the  battle.  To  the  Fabian  Calvinist  (by 
his  own  confession)  they  are  only  a  long  pro- 
cession of  the  victors  in  laurels  and  the  van- 
quished in  chains.  To  me  earthly  life  is  the 
drama;  to  him  it  is  the  epilogue.  Shavians 
think  about  the  embryo;  Spiritualists  about 
the  ghost ;  Christians  about  the  man.  It  is 
as  well  to  have  these  things  clear. 

Now  all  our  sociology  and  eugenics  and  the 
rest  of  it  are  not  so  much  materialist  as  con- 
fusedly Calvinist;  they  are  chiefly  occupied  in 
educating  the  child  before  he  exists.  The 
whole  movement  is  full  of  a  singular  depression 
about  what  one  can  do  with  the  populace,  com- 
bined with  a  strange  disembodied  gayety  about 
what  may  be  done  with  posterity.  These  es- 
sential Calvinists  have,  indeed,  abolished  some 
of  the  more  liberal  and  universal  parts  of  Cal- 
vinism, such  as  the  belief  in  an  intellectual  de- 
sign or  an  everlasting  happiness.  But  though 
231 


CALVINISM     OF     TO-DAY 

Mr.  Shaw  and  his  friends  admit  it  is  a  super- 
stition that  a  man  is  judged  after  death,  they 
stick  to  their  central  doctrine,  that  he  is  judged 
before  he  is  born. 

In  consequence  of  this  atmosphere  of  Cal- 
vinism in  the  cultured  world  of  to-day,  it  is 
apparently  necessary  to  begin  all  arguments 
on  education  with  some  mention  of  obstetrics 
and  the  unknown  world  of  the  prenatal.  All 
I  shall  have  to  say,  however,  on  heredity  will 
be  very  brief,  because  I  shall  confine  myself 
to  what  is  known  about  it,  and  that  is  very 
nearly  nothing.  It  is  by  no  means  self-evi- 
dent, but  it  is  a  current  modern  dogma,  that 
nothing  actually  enters  the  body  at  birth  ex- 
cept a  life  derived  and  compounded  from  the 
parents.  There  is  at  least  quite  as  much  to 
be  said  for  the  Christian  theory  that  an  ele- 
ment comes  from  God,  or  the  Buddhist  theory 
that  such  an  element  comes  from  previous  ex- 
istences. But  this  is  not  a  religious  work,  and 
I  must  submit  to  those  very  narrow  intellec- 
tual limits  which  the  absence  of  theology  al- 


CALVINISM     OF     TO-DAY 

ways  imposes.  Leaving  the  soul  on  one  side, 
let  us  suppose  for  the  sake  of  argument  that 
the  human  character  in  the  first  case  comes 
wholly  from  parents;  and  then  let  us  curtly 
state  our  knowledge,  or  rather  our  ignorance. 


233 


THE    TRIBAL    TERROR 

POPULAB  science,  like  that  of  Mr.  Blatchford, 
is  in  this  matter  as  mild  as  old  wives'  tales. 
Mr.  Blatchford,  with  colossal  simplicity,  ex- 
plained to  millions  of  clerks  and  workingmen 
that  the  mother  is  like  a  bottle  of  blue  beads 
and  the  father  like  a  bottle  of  yellow  beads ; 
and  so  the  child  is  like  a  bottle  of  mixed  blue 
beads  and  yellow.  He  might  just  as  well  have 
said  that  if  the  father  has  two  legs  and  the 
mother  has  two  legs,  the  child  will  have  four 
legs.  Obviously  it  is  not  a  question  of  simple 
addition  or  simple  division  of  a  number  of  hard 
detached  "  qualities,"  like  beads.  It  is  an  or- 
ganic crisis  and  transformation  of  the  most 
mysterious  sort ;  so  that  even  if  the  result  is 
unavoidable,  it  will  still  be  unexpected.  It  is 
not  like  blue  beads  mixed  with  yellow  beads ; 
it  is  like  blue  mixed  with  yellow;  the  result  of 
234, 


THE     TRIBAL     TERROR 

which  is  green,  a  totally  novel  and  unique  ex- 
perience, a  new  emotion.  A  man  might  live 
in  a  complete  cosmos  of  blue  and  yellow,  like 
the  "  Edinburgh  Review  " ;  a  man  might  never 
have  seen  anything  but  a  golden  cornfield  and 
a  sapphire  sky;  and  still  he  might  never  have 
had  so  wild  a  fancy  as  green.  If  you  paid  a 
sovereign  for  a  bluebell ;  if  you  spilled  the  mus- 
tard on  the  blue-books  ;  if  you  married  a  canary 
to  a  blue  baboon ;  there  is  nothing  in  any  of 
these  wild  weddings  that  contains  even  a  hint 
of  green.  Green  is  not  a  mental  combination, 
like  addition ;  it  is  physical  result,  like  birth. 
So,  apart  from  the  fact  that  nobody  ever  really 
understands  parents  or  children  either,  yet  even 
if  we  could  understand  the  parents,  we  could 
not  make  any  conjecture  about  the  children. 
Each  time  the  force  works  in  a  different  way ; 
each  time  the  constituent  colors  combine  into 
a  different  spectacle.  A  girl  may  actually  in- 
herit her  ugliness  from  her  mother's  good  looks. 
A  boy  may  actually  get  his  weakness  from  his 
father's  strength.  Even  if  we  admit  it  is  really 
235 


THE     TRIBAL     TERROR 

a  fate,  for  us  it  must  remain  a  fairy  tale. 
Considered  in  regard  to  its  causes,  the  Calvin- 
ists  and  materialists  may  be  right  or  wrong; 
we  leave  them  their  dreary  debate.  But  con- 
sidered in  regard  to  its  results  there  is  no  doubt 
about  it.  The  thing  is  always  a  new  color; 
a  strange  star.  Every  birth  is  as  lonely  as  a 
miracle.  Every  child  is  as  uninvited  as  a  mon- 
strosity. 

On  all  such  subjects  there  is  no  science,  but 
only  a  sort  of  ardent  ignorance;  and  nobody 
has  ever  been  able  to  offer  any  theories  of 
moral  heredity  which  justified  themselves  in  the 
only  scientific  sense;  that  is  that  one  could  cal- 
culate on  them  beforehand.  There  are  six 
cases,  say,  of  a  grandson  having  the  same 
twitch  of  mouth  or  vice  of  character  as  his 
grandfather ;  or  perhaps  there  are  sixteen 
cases,  or  perhaps  sixty.  But  there  are  not 
two  cases,  there  is  not  one  case,  there  are  no 
cases  at  all,  of  anybody  betting  half  a  crown 
that  the  grandfather  will  have  a  grandson  with 
the  twitch  or  the  vice.  In  short,  we  deal  with 
236 


THE     TRIBAL     TERROR 

heredity  as  we  deal  with  omens,  affinities  and 
the  fulfillment  of  dreams.  The  things  do  hap- 
pen, and  when  they  happen  we  record  them; 
but  not  even  a  lunatic  ever  reckons  on  them. 
Indeed,  heredity,  like  dreams  and  omens,  is 
a  barbaric  notion ;  that  is,  not  necessarily  an 
untrue,  but  a  dim,  groping  and  unsystematized 
notion.  A  civilized  man  feels  himself  a  little 
more  free  from  his  family.  Before  Christian- 
ity these  tales  of  tribal  doom  occupied  the  sav- 
age north ;  and  since  the  Reformation  and  the 
revolt  against  Christianity  (which  is  the  re- 
ligion of  a  civilized  freedom)  savagery  is  slowly 
creeping  back  in  the  form  of  realistic  novels 
and  problem  plays.  The  curse  of  Rougon- 
Macquart  is  as  heathen  and  superstitious  as 
the  curse  of  Ravenswood;  only  not  so  well 
written.  But  in  this  twilight  barbaric  sense 
the  feeling  of  a  racial  fate  is  not  irrational, 
and  may  be  allowed  like  a  hundred  other  half 
emotions  that  make  life  whole.  The  only  es- 
sential of  tragedy  is  that  one  should  take  it 
lightly.  But  even  when  the  barbarian  deluge 
237 


THE     TRIBAL     TERROR 

rose  to  its  highest  in  the  madder  novels  of 
Zola  (such  as  that  called  "  The  Human 
Beast";  a  gross  libel  on  beasts  as  well  as  hu- 
manity), even  then  the  application  of  the  he- 
reditary idea  to  practice  is  avowedly  timid  and 
fumbling.  The  students  of  heredity  are  sav- 
ages in  this  vital  sense;  that  they  stare  back 
at  marvels,  but  they  dare  not  stare  forward  to 
schemes.  In  practice  no  one  is  mad  enough 
to  legislate  or  educate  upon  dogmas  of  physi- 
cal inheritance;  and  even  the  language  of  the 
thing  is  rarely  used  except  for  special  modern 
purposes,  such  as  the  endowment  of  research 
or  the  oppression  of  the  poor. 


238 


Ill 

THE     TRICKS     OF     ENVIRONMENT 

AFTER  all  the  modern  clatter  of  Calvinism, 
therefore,  it  is  only  with  the  born  child  that 
anybody  dares  to  deal;  and  the  question  is 
not  eugenics  but  education.  Or  again,  to 
adopt  that  rather  tiresome  terminology  of  pop- 
ular science,  it  is  not  a  question  of  heredity 
but  of  environment.  I  will  not  needlessly  com- 
plicate this  question  by  urging  at  length  that 
environment  also  is  open  to  some  of  the  objec- 
tions and  hesitations  which  paralyze  the  em- 
ployment of  heredity.  I  will  merely  suggest 
in  passing  that  even  about  the  effect  of  environ- 
ment modern  people  talk  much  too  cheerfully 
and  cheaply.  The  idea  that  surroundings  will 
mold  a  man  is  always  mixed  up  with  the  to- 
tally different  idea  that  they  will  mold  him 
in  one  particular  way.  To  take  the  broadest 
case,  landscape  no  doubt  affects  the  soul;  but 
how  it  affects  it  is  quite  another  matter.  To 
239 


TRICKS     OF     ENVIRONMENT 

be  born  among  pine-trees  might  mean  loving 
pine-trees.  It  might  mean  loathing  pine-trees. 
It  might  quite  seriously  mean  never  having  seen 
a  pine-tree.  Or  it  might  mean  any  mixture  of 
these  or  any  degree  of  any  of  them.  So  that 
the  scientific  method  here  lacks  a  little  in  pre- 
cision. I  am  not  speaking  without  the  book; 
on  the  contrary,  I  am  speaking  with  the  blue- 
book,  with  the  guide-book  and  the  atlas.  It 
may  be  that  the  Highlanders  are  poetical  be- 
cause they  inhabit  mountains ;  but  are  the  Swiss 
prosaic  because  they  inhabit  mountains?  It 
may  be  the  Swiss  have  fought  for  freedom  be- 
cause they  had  hills ;  did  the  Dutch  fight  for 
freedom  because  they  hadn't?  Personally  I 
should  think  it  quite  likely.  Environment 
might  work  negatively  as  well  as  positively. 
The  Swiss  may  be  sensible,  not  in  spite  of  their 
wild  skyline,  but  because  of  their  wild  skyline. 
The  Flemings  may  be  fantastic  artists,  not  in 
spite  of  their  dull  skyline,  but  because  of  it. 

I  only  pause  on  this  parenthesis  to  show  that, 
even   in  matters   admittedly  within  its  range, 
240 


TRICKS     OF     ENVIRONMENT 

popular  science  goes  a  great  deal  too  fast,  and 
drops  enormous  links  of  logic.  Nevertheless,  it 
remains  the  working  reality  that  what  we  have 
to  deal  with  in  the  case  of  children  is,  for  all 
practical  purposes,  environment;  or,  to  use  the 
older  word,  education.  When  all  such  de- 
ductions are  made,  education  is  at  least  a  form 
of  will-worship,  not  of  cowardly  fact-worship; 
it  deals  with  a  department  that  we  can  control ; 
it  does  not  merely  darken  us  with  the  barbarian 
pessimism  of  Zola  and  the  heredity-hunt.  We 
shall  certainly  make  fools  of  ourselves ;  that  is 
what  is  meant  by  philosophy.  But  we  shall 
not  merely  make  beasts  of  ourselves ;  which  is 
the  nearest  popular  definition  for  merely  fol- 
lowing the  laws  of  Nature  and  cowering  under 
the  vengeance  of  the  flesh.  Education  contains 
much  moonshine ;  but  not  of  the  sort  that  makes 
mere  mooncalves  and  idiots,  the  slaves  of  a 
silver  magnet,  the  one  eye  of  the  world.  In 
this  decent  arena  there  are  fads,  but  not  fren- 
zies. Doubtless  we  shall  often  find  a  mare's 
nest;  but  it  will  not  always  be  the  nightmare's. 


IV 

THE  TRUTH  ABOUT  EDUCATION 

WHEN  a  man  is  asked  to  write  down  what  he 
really  thinks  on  education,  a  certain  gravity 
grips  and  stiffens  his  soul,  which  might  be 
mistaken  by  the  superficial  for  disgust.  If  it 
be  really  true  that  men  sickened  of  sacred  words 
and  wearied  of  theology,  if  this  largely  unrea- 
soning irritation  against  "  dogma "  did  arise 
out  of  some  ridiculous  excess  of  such  things 
among  priests  in  the  past,  then  I  fancy  we  must 
be  laying  up  a  fine  crop  of  cant  for  our  de- 
scendants to  grow  tired  of.  Probably  the  word 
"  education "  will  some  day  seem  honestly  as 
old  and  objectless  as  the  word  "justification" 
now  seems  in  a  Puritan  folio.  Gibbon  thought 
it  frightfully  funny  that  people  should  have 
fought  about  the  difference  between  the  "  Ho- 
moousion "  and  the  "  Homoiousion."  The 
time  will  come  when  somebody  will  laugh  louder 


TRUTH     ABOUT     EDUCATION 

to  think  that  men  thundered  against  Sectarian 
Education  and  also  against  Secular  Educa- 
tion ;  that  men  of  prominence  and  position  actu- 
ally denounced  the  schools  for  teaching  a  creed 
and  also  for  not  teaching  a  faith.  The  two 
Greek  words  in  Gibbon  look  rather  alike;  but 
they  really  mean  quite  different  things.  Faith 
and  creed  do  not  look  alike,  but  they  mean  ex- 
actly the  same  thing.  Creed  happens  to  be 
the  Latin  for  faith. 

Now  having  read  numberless  newspaper  arti- 
cles on  education,  and  even  written  a  good 
many  of  them,  and  having  heard  deafening  and 
indeterminate  discussion  going  on  all  around 
me  almost  ever  since  I  was  born,  about  whether 
religion  was  a  part  of  education,  about  whether 
hygiene  was  an  essential  of  education,  about 
whether  militarism  was  inconsistent  with  true 
education,  I  naturally  pondered  much  on  this 
recurring  substantive,  and  I  am  ashamed  to  say 
that  it  was  comparatively  late  in  life  that  I 
saw  the  main  fact  about  it. 

Of  course,  the  main  fact  about  education  is 


TRUTH     ABOUT     EDUCATION 

that  there  is  no  such  thing.  It  does  not  exist, 
as  theology  or  soldiering  exist.  Theology  is 
a  word  like  geology,  soldiering  is  a  word  like 
soldering;  these  sciences  may  be  healthy  or  no 
as  hobbies;  but  they  deal  with  stone  and  ket- 
tles, with  definite  things.  But  education  is  not 
a  word  like  geology  or  kettles.  Education  is 
a  word  like  "  transmission  "  or  "  inheritance  " ; 
it  is  not  an  object,  but  a  method.  It  must 
mean  the  conveying  of  certain  facts,  views  or 
qualities,  to  the  last  baby  born.  They  might 
be  the  most  trivial  facts  or  the  most  pre- 
posterous views  or  the  most  offensive  quali- 
ties ;  but  if  they  are  handed  on  from  one 
generation  to  another  they  are  education.  Ed- 
ucation is  not  a  thing  like  theology ;  it  is  not 
an  inferior  or  superior  thing;  it  is  not  a  thing 
in  the  same  category  of  terms.  Theology  and 
education  are  to  each  other  like  a  love-letter 
to  the  General  Post  Office.  Mr.  Fagin  was 
quite  as  educational  as  Dr.  Strong ;  in  practice 
probably  more  educational.  It  is  giving  some- 
thing— perhaps  poison.  Education  is  tradi- 


TRUTH     ABOUT     EDUCATION 

tion,  and  tradition   (as  its  name  implies)    can 
be  treason. 

This  first  truth  is  frankly  banal ;  but  it  is  so 
perpetually  ignored  in  our  political  prosing 
that  it  must  be  made  plain.  A  little  boy  in 
a  little  house,  son  of  a  little  tradesman,  is 
taught  to  eat  his  breakfast,  to  take  his  medi- 
cine, to  love  his  country,  to  say  his  prayers, 
and  to  wear  his  Sunday  clothes.  Obviously 
Fagin,  if  he  found  such  a  boy,  would  teach  him 
to  drink  gin,  to  lie,  to  betray  his  country,  to 
blaspheme  and  to  wear  false  whiskers.  But 
so  also  Mr.  Salt  the  vegetarian  would  abolish 
the  boy's  breakfast ;  Mrs.  Eddy  would  throw 
away  his  medicine;  Count  Tolstoi  would  re- 
buke him  for  loving  his  country;  Mr.  Blatch- 
ford  would  stop  his  prayers,  and  Mr.  Edward 
Carpenter  would  theoretically  denounce  Sunday 
clothes,  and  perhaps  all  clothes.  I  do  not  de- 
fend any  of  these  advanced  views,  not  even 
Fagin's.  But  I  do  ask  what,  between  the  lot 
of  them,  has  become  of  the  abstract  entity 
cabled  education.  It  is  not  (as  commonly  sup- 
245 


TRUTH     ABOUT     EDUCATION 

posed)  that  the  tradesman  teaches  education 
plus  Christianity;  Mr.  Salt,  education  plus 
vegetarianism;  Fagin,  education  plus  crime. 
The  truth  is,  that  there  is  nothing  in  common 
at  all  between  these  teachers,  except  that  they 
teach.  In  short,  the  only  thing  they  share  is 
the  one  thing  they  profess  to  dislike:  the  gen- 
eral idea  of  authority.  It  is  quaint  that  peo- 
ple talk  of  separating  dogma  from  education. 
Dogma  is  actually  the  only  thing  that  cannot 
be  separated  from  education.  It  is  education. 
A  teacher  who  is  not  dogmatic  is  simply  a 
teacher  who  is  not  teaching. 


246 


AN    EVIL    CRY 

THE  fashionable  fallacy  is  that  by  education 
we  can  give  people  something  that  we  have 
not  got.  To  hear  people  talk  one  would  think 
it  was  some  sort  of  magic  chemistry,  by  which, 
out  of  a  laborious  hotchpotch  of  hygienic 
meals,  baths,  breathing  exercises,  fresh  air  and 
freehand  drawing,  we  can  produce  something 
splendid  by  accident;  we  can  create  what  we 
cannot  conceive.  These  pages  have,  of  course, 
no  other  general  purpose  than  to  point  out  that 
we  cannot  create  anything  good  until  we  have 
conceived  it.  It  is  odd  that  these  people,  who 
in  the  matter  of  heredity  are  so  sullenly  at- 
tached to  law,  in  the  matter  of  environment 
seem  almost  to  believe  in  miracle.  They  in- 
sist that  nothing  but  what  was  in  the  bodies 
of  the  parents  can  go  to  make  the  bodies  of 
the  children.  But  they  seem  somehow  to  think 
S47 


AN     EVIL     CRY 

that  things  can  get  into  the  heads  of  the  chil- 
dren which  were  not  in  the  heads  of  the  parents, 
or,  indeed,  anywhere  else. 

There  has  arisen  in  this  connection  a  foolish 
and  wicked  cry  typical  of  the  confusion.  I 
mean  the  cry,  "  Save  the  children."  It  is,  of 
course,  part  of  that  modern  morbidity  that  in- 
sists on  treating  the  State  (which  is  the  home 
of  man)  as  a  sort  of  desperate  expedient  in 
time  of  panic.  This  terrified  opportunism  is 
also  the  origin  of  the  Socialist  and  other 
schemes.  Just  as  they  would  collect  and  share 
all  the  food  as  men  do  in  a  famine,  so  they 
would  divide  the  children  from  their  fathers, 
as  men  do  in  a  shipwreck.  That  a  human  com- 
munity might  conceivably  not  be  in  a  condition 
of  famine  or  shipwreck  never  seems  to  cross 
their  minds.  This  cry  of  "  Save  the  children  " 
has  in  it  the  hateful  implication  that  it  is  im- 
possible to  save  the  fathers ;  in  other  words, 
that  many  millions  of  grown-up,  sane,  respon- 
sible and  self-supporting  Europeans  are  to  be 
treated  as  dirt  or  debris  and  swept  away  out 
248 


AN    EVIL     CRY 

of  the  discussion ;  called  dipsomaniacs  because 
they  drink  in  public  houses  instead  of  private 
houses ;  called  unemployables  because  nobody 
knows  how  to  get  them  work;  called  dullards 
if  they  still  adhere  to  conventions,  and  called 
loafers  if  they  still  love  liberty.  Now  I  am 
concerned,  first  and  last,  to  maintain  that  un- 
less you  can  save  the  fathers,  you  cannot  save 
the  children ;  that  at  present  we  cannot  save 
others,  for  we  cannot  save  ourselves.  We  can- 
not teach  citizenship  if  we  are  not  citizens; 
we  cannot  free  others  if  we  have  forgotten  the 
appetite  of  freedom.  Education  is  only  truth 
in  a  state  of  transmission ;  and  how  can  we  pass 
on  truth  if  it  has  never  come  into  our  hand? 
Thus  we  find  that  education  is  of  all  the  cases 
the  clearest  for  our  general  purpose.  It  is  vain 
to  save  children;  for  they  cannot  remain  chil- 
dren. By  hypothesis  we  are  teaching  them  to 
be  men ;  and  how  can  it  be  so  simple  to  teach 
an  ideal  manhood  to  others  if  it  is  so  vain  and 
hopeless  to  find  one  for  ourselves? 

I  know  that  certain  crazy  pedants  have  at- 


AN     EVIL     CRY 

tempted  to  counter  this  difficulty  by  maintain- 
ing that  education  is  not  instruction  at  all, 
does  not  teach  by  authority  at  all.  They  pre- 
sent the  process  as  coming,  not  from  outside, 
from  the  teacher,  but  entirely  from  inside  the 
boy.  Education,  they  say,  is  the  Latin  for 
leading  out  or  drawing  out  the  dormant  fac- 
ulties of  each  person.  Somewhere  far  down 
in  the  dim  boyish  soul  is  a  primordial  yearn- 
ing to  learn  Greek  accents  or  to  wear  clean  col- 
lars; and  the  schoolmasters  only  gently  and 
tenderly  liberates  this  imprisoned  purpose. 
Sealed  up  in  the  newborn  babe  are  the  intrinsic 
secrets  of  how  to  eat  asparagus  and  what  was 
the  date  of  Bannockburn.  The  educator  only 
draws  out  the  child's  own  unapparent  love  of 
long  division ;  only  leads  out  the  child's  own 
slightly  veiled  preference  for  milk  pudding  to 
tarts.  I  am  not  sure  that  I  believe  in  the 
derivation;  I  have  heard  the  disgraceful  sug- 
gestion that  "  educator,"  if  applied  to  a  Roman 
schoolmaster,  did  not  mean  leading  out  young 
functions  into  freedom ;  but  only  meant  taking 
250 


AN    EVIL    CRY 

out  little  boys  for  a  walk.  But  I  am  much 
more  certain  that  I  do  not  agree  with  the  doc- 
trine; I  think  it  would  be  about  as  sane  to  say 
that  the  baby's  milk  comes  from  the  baby  as 
to  say  that  the  baby's  educational  merits  do. 
There  is,  indeed,  in  each  living  creature  a 
collection  of  forces  and  functions ;  but  educa- 
tion means  producing  these  in  particular  shapes 
and  training  them  to  particular  purposes,  or 
it  means  nothing  at  all.  Speaking  is  the  most 
practical  instance  of  the  whole  situation.  You 
may  indeed  "  draw  out "  squeals  and  grunts 
from  the  child  by  simply  poking  him  and  pull- 
ing him  about,  a  pleasant  but  cruel  pastime 
to  which  many  psychologists  are  addicted. 
But  you  will  wait  and  watch  very  patiently 
indeed  before  you  draw  the  English  language 
out  of  him.  That  you  have  got  to  put  into 
him;  and  there  is  an  end  of  the  matter. 


251 


VI 

AUTHORITY  THE  UNAVOIDABLE 

BUT  the  important  point  here  is  only  that  you 
cannot  anyhow  get  rid  of  authority  in  educa- 
tion; it  is  not  so  much  (as  the  poor  Conserva- 
tives say)  that  parental  authority  ought  to 
be  preserved,  as  that  it  cannot  be  destroyed. 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  once  said  that  he  hated  the 
idea  of  forming  a  child's  mind.  In  that  case 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  had  better  hang  himself; 
for  he  hates  something  inseparable  from  human 
life.  I  only  mentioned  educere  and  the  draw- 
ing out  of  the  faculties  in  order  to  point  out 
that  even  this  mental  trick  does  not  avoid  the 
inevitable  idea  of  parental  or  scholastic  author- 
ity. The  educator  drawing  out  is  just  as  ar- 
bitary  and  coercive  as  the  instructor  pouring 
in ;  for  he  draws  out  what  he  chooses.  He  de- 
cides what  in  the  child  shall  be  developed  and 
what  shall  not  be  developed.  He  does  not  (I 
252 


THE     UNAVOIDABLE 

suppose)  draw  out  the  neglected  faculty  of 
forgery.  He  does  not  (so  far  at  least)  lead 
out,  with  timid  steps,  a  shy  talent  for  tor- 
ture. The  only  result  of  all  this  pompous  and 
precise  distinction  between  the  educator  and  the 
instructor  is  that  the  instructor  pokes  where 
he  likes  and  the  educator  pulls  where  he  likes. 
Exactly  the  same  intellectual  violence  is  done 
to  the  creature  who  is  poked  and  pulled.  Now 
we  must  all  accept  the  responsibility  of  this 
intellectual  violence.  Education  is  violent ;  be- 
cause it  is  creative.  It  is  creative  because  it 
is  human.  It  is  as  reckless  as  playing  on  the 
fiddle;  as  dogmatic  as  drawing  a  picture;  as 
brutal  as  building  a  house.  In  short,  it  is  what 
all  human  action  is;  it  is  an  interference  with 
life  and  growth.  After  that  it  is  a  trifling  and 
even  a  jocular  question  whether  we  say  of  this 
tremendous  tormentor,  the  artist  Man,  that  he 
puts  things  into  us  like  an  apothecary,  or  draws 
things  out  of  us,  like  a  dentist. 

The  point  is  that  Man  does  what  he  likes. 
He  claims  the  right  to  take  his  mother  Nature 
253 


THE     UNAVOIDABLE 

under  his  control;  he  claims  the  right  to  make 
his  child  the  Superman,  in  his  image.  Once 
flinch  from  this  creative  authority  of  man,  and 
the  whole  courageous  raid  which  we  call  civili- 
zation wavers  and  falls  to  pieces.  Now  most 
modern  freedom  is  at  root  fear.  It  is  not  so 
much  that  we  are  too  bold  to  endure  rules;  it 
is  rather  that  we  are  too  timid  to  endure  re- 
sponsibilities. And  Mr.  Shaw  and  such  people 
are  especially  shrinking  from  that  awful  and 
ancestral  responsibility  to  which  our  fathers 
committed  us  when  they  took  the  wild  step  of 
becoming  men.  I  mean  the  responsibility  of 
affirming  the  truth  of  our  human  tradition  and 
handing  it  on  with  a  voice  of  authority,  an  un- 
shaken voice.  That  is  the  one  eternal  educa- 
tion ;  to  be  sure  enough  that  something  is  true 
that  you  dare  to  tell  it  to  a  child.  From  this 
high  audacious  duty  the  moderns  are  fleeing 
on  every  side;  and  the  only  excuse  for  them  is, 
(of  course,)  that  their  modern  philosophies  are 
so  half-baked  and  hypothetical  that  they  can- 
not convince  themselves  enough  to  convince 
254 


THE     UNAVOIDABLE 

even  a  newborn  babe.  This,  of  course,  is  con- 
nected with  the  decay  of  democracy;  and  is 
somewhat  of  a  separate  subject.  Suffice  it  to 
say  here  that  when  I  say  that  we  should  in- 
struct our  children,  I  mean  that  we  should  do 
it,  not  that  Mr.  Sully  or  Professor  Earl  Barnes 
should  do  it.  The  trouble  in  too  many  of  our 
modern  schools  is  that  the  State,  being  con- 
trolled so  specially  by  the  few,  allows  cranks 
and  experiments  to  go  straight  to  the  school- 
room when  they  have  never  passed  through  the 
Parliament,  the  public  house,  the  private  house, 
the  church,  or  the  marketplace.  Obviously,  it 
ought  to  be  the  oldest  things  that  are  taught 
to  the  youngest  people;  the  assured  and  ex- 
perienced truths  that  are  put  first  to  the  baby. 
But  in  a  school  to-day  the  baby  has  to  submit 
to  a  system  that  is  younger  than  himself.  The 
flopping  infant  of  four  actually  has  more  ex- 
perience, and  has  weathered  the  world  longer, 
than  the  dogma  to  which  he  is  made  to  submit. 
Many  a  school  boasts  of  having  the  last  ideas 
in  education,  when  it  has  not  even  the  first  idea ; 
255 


THE     UNAVOIDABLE 

for  the  first  idea  is  that  even  innocence,  divine 
as  it  is,  may  learn  something  from  experience. 
But  this,  as  I  say,  is  all  due  to  the  mere  fact 
that  we  are  managed  by  a  little  oligarchy ;  my 
system  presupposes  that  men  who  govern  them- 
selves will  govern  their  children.  To-day  we 
all  use  Popular  Education  as  meaning  educa- 
tion of  the  people.  I  wish  I  could  use  it  as 
meaning  education  by  the  people. 

The  urgent  point  at  present  is  that  these 
expansive  educators  do  not  avoid  the  violence 
of  authority  an  inch  more  than  the  old  school- 
masters. Nay,  it  might  be  maintained  that 
they  avoid  it  less.  The  old  village  schoolmas- 
ter beat  a  boy  for  not  learning  grammar  and 
sent  him  out  into  the  playground  to  play  at 
anything  he  liked;  or  at  nothing,  if  he  liked 
that  better.  The  modern  scientific  schoolmas- 
ter pursues  him  into  the  playground  and  makes 
him  play  at  cricket,  because  exercise  is  so 
good  for  the  health.  The  modern  Dr.  Busby 
is  a  doctor  of  medicine  as  well  as  a  doctor  of 
divinity.  He  may  say  that  the  good  of  ex- 
256 


THE    UNAVOIDABLE 

ercise  is  self-evident;  but  he  must  say  it,  and 
say  it  with  authority.  It  cannot  really  be  self- 
evident  or  it  never  could  have  been  compulsory. 
But  this  is  in  modern  practice  a  very  mild  case. 
In  modern  practice  the  free  educationists  for- 
bid far  more  things  than  the  old-fashioned  ed- 
ucationists. A  person  with  a  taste  for  para- 
dox (if  any  such  shameless  creature  could  ex- 
ist) might  with  some  plausibility  maintain  con- 
cerning all  our  expansion  since  the  failure  of 
Luther's  frank  paganism  and  its  replacement 
by  Calvin's  Puritanism,  that  all  this  expansion 
has  not  been  an  expansion,  but  the  closing  in 
of  a  prison,  so  that  less  and  less  beautiful  and 
humane  things  have  been  permitted.  The  Puri- 
tans destroyed  images ;  the  Rationalists  for- 
bade fairy  tales.  Count  Tostoi  practically  is- 
sued one  of  his  papal  encyclicals  against  mu- 
sic ;  and  I  have  heard  of  modern  educationists 
who  forbid  children  to  play  with  tin  soldiers. 
I  remember  a  meek  little  madman  who  came  up 
to  me  at  some  Socialist  soiree  or  other,  and 
asked  me  to  use  my  influence  (have  I  any  in- 
257 


THE     UNAVOIDABLE 

fluence?)  against  adventure  stories  for  boys. 
It  seems  they  breed  an  appetite  for  blood. 
But  never  mind  that ;  one  must  keep  one's  tem- 
per in  this  madhouse.  I  need  only  insist  here 
that  these  things,  even  if  a  just  deprivation, 
are  a  deprivation.  I  do  not  deny  that  the  old 
vetoes  and  punishments  were  often  idiotic  and 
cruel ;  though  they  are  much  more  so  in  a  coun- 
try like  England  (where  in  practice  only  a  rich 
man  decrees  the  punishment  and  only  a  poor 
man  receives  it)  than  in  countries  with  a  clearer 
popular  tradition — such  as  Russia.  In  Russia 
flogging  is  often  inflicted  by  peasants  on  a 
peasant.  In  modern  England  flogging  can 
only  in  practice  be  inflicted  by  a  gentleman  on 
a  very  poor  man.  Thus  only  a  few  days  ago 
as  I  write  a  small  boy  (a  son  of  the  poor,  of 
course)  was  sentenced  to  flogging  and  impris- 
onment for  five  years  for  having  picked  up 
a  small  piece  of  coal  which  the  experts  value 
at  5d.  I  am  entirely  on  the  side  of  such  liberals 
and  humanitarians  as  have  protested  against 
this  almost  bestial  ignorance  about  boys.  But 
258 


THE     UNAVOIDABLE 

I  do  think  it  a  little  unfair  that  these  human- 
itarians, who  excuse  boys  for  being  robbers, 
should  denounce  them  for  playing  at  robbers. 
I  do  think  that  those  who  understand  a  gutter- 
snipe playing  with  a  piece  of  coal  might,  by 
a  sudden  spurt  of  imagination,  understand  him 
playing  with  a  tin  soldier.  To  sum  it  up  in 
one  sentence :  I  think  my  meek  little  madman 
might  have  understood  that  there  is  many  a 
boy  who  would  rather  be  flogged,  and  unjustly 
flogged,  than  have  his  adventure  story  taken 
away. 


259 


VII 

THE     HUMILITY     OF    MRS.     GRUNDY 

IN  short,  the  new  education  is  as  harsh  as  the 
old,  whether  or  no  it  is  as  high.  The  freest 
fad,  as  much  as  the  strictest  formula,  is  stiff 
with  authority.  It  is  because  the  humane 
father  thinks  soldiers  wrong  that  they  are  for- 
bidden; there  is  no  pretense,  there  can  be  no 
pretense,  that  the  boy  would  think  so.  The 
average  boy's  impression  certainly  would  be 
simply  this :  "  If  your  father  is  a  Methodist 
you  must  not  play  with  soldiers  on  Sunday. 
If  your  father  is  a  Socialist  you  must  not  play 
with  them  even  on  week  days."  All  education- 
ists are  utterly  dogmatic  and  authoritarian. 
You  cannot  have  free  education ;  for  if  you  left 
a  child  free  you  would  not  educate  him  at  all. 
Is  there,  then,  no  distinction  or  difference  be- 
tween the  most  hide-bound  conventionalists  and 
260 


HUMILITY   OF   MRS.   GRUNDY 

the  most  brilliant  and  bizarre  innovators?  Is 
there  no  difference  between  the  heaviest  heavy 
father  and  the  most  reckless  and  speculative 
maiden  aunt?  Yes;  there  is.  The  difference 
is  that  the  heavy  father,  in  his  heavy  way,  is 
a  democrat.  He  does  not  urge  a  thing  merely 
because  to  his  fancy  it  should  be  done;  but, 
because  (in  his  own  admirable  republican  for- 
mula) "  Everybody  does  it."  The  conven- 
tional authority  does  claim  some  popular  man- 
date ;  the  unconventional  authority  does  not. 
The  Puritan  who  forbids  soldiers  on  Sunday 
is  at  least  expressing  Puritan  opinion;  not 
merely  his  own  opinion.  He  is  not  a  despot; 
he  is  a  democracy,  a  tyrannical  democracy,  a 
dingy  and  local  democracy  perhaps ;  but  one 
that  could  do  and  has  done  the  two  ultimate 
virile  things — fight  and  appeal  to  God.  But 
the  veto  of  the  new  educationist  is  like  the  veto 
of  the  House  of  Lords ;  it  does  not  pretend  to 
be  representative.  These  innovators  are  al- 
ways talking  about  the  blushing  modesty  of 
Mrs.  Grundy.  I  do  not  know  whether  Mrs. 
261 


HUMILITY   OF   MRS.   GRUNDY 

Grundy  is  more  modest  than  they  are;  but  I 
am  sure  she  is  more  humble. 

But  there  is  a  further  complication.  The 
more  anarchic  modern  may  again  attempt  to 
escape  the  dilemma  by  saying  that  education 
should  only  be  an  enlargement  of  the  mind,  an 
opening  of  all  the  organs  of  receptivity. 
Light  (he  says)  should  be  brought  into  dark' 
ness ;  blinded  and  thwarted  existences  in  all 
our  ugly  corners  should  merely  be  permittee! 
to  perceive  and  expand;  in  short,  enlighten- 
ment should  be  shed  over  darkest  London.  Now 
here  is  just  the  trouble;  that,  in  so  far  as  this 
is  involved,  there  is  no  darkest  London.  Lon- 
don is  not  dark  at  all;  not  even  at  night.  We 
have  said  that  if  education  is  a  solid  substance, 
then  there  is  none  of  it.  We  may  now  say  that 
if  education  is  an  abstract  expansion  there  is 
no  lack  of  it.  There  is  far  too  much  of  it. 
In  fact,  there  is  nothing  else. 

There  are  no  uneducated  people.  Every 
body  in  England  is  educated;  only  most  peo- 
ple are  educated  wrong.  The  state  schools 


HUMILITY   OF   MRS.   GRUNDY 

were  not  the  first  schools,  but  among  the  last 
schools  to  be  established ;  and  London  had  been 
educating  Londoners  long  before  the  London 
School  Board.  The  error  is  a  highly  prac- 
tical one.  It  is  persistently  assumed  that  un- 
less a  child  is  civilized  by  the  established  schools, 
he  must  remain  a  barbarian.  I  wish  he  did. 
Every  child  in  London  becomes  a  highly  civi- 
lized person.  But  there  are  so  many  different 
civilizations,  most  of  them  born  tired.  Any- 
one will  tell  you  that  the  trouble  with  the  poor 
is  not  so  much  that  the  old  are  still  foolish, 
but  rather  that  the  young  are  already  wise. 
Without  going  to  school  at  all,  the  gutter- 
boy  would  be  educated.  Without  going  to 
school  at  all,  he  would  be  over-educated.  The 
real  object  of  our  schools  should  be  not  so  much 
to  suggest  complexity  as  solely  to  restore  sim- 
plicity. You  will  hear  venerable  idealists  de- 
clare we  must  make  war  on  the  ignorance  of 
the  poor;  but,  indeed,  we  have  rather  to  make 
war  on  their  knowledge.  Real  educationists 
have  to  resist  a  kind  of  roaring  cataract  of 
263 


HUMILITY  OF   MRS.   GRUNDY 

culture.  The  truant  is  being  taught  all  day. 
If  the  children  do  not  look  at  the  large  letters 
in  the  spelling-book,  they  need  only  walk  out- 
side and  look  at  the  large  letters  on  the  poster. 
If  they  do  not  care  for  the  colored  maps  pro- 
vided by  the  school,  they  can  gape  at  the  col- 
ored maps  provided  by  the  Daily  Mall.  If 
they  tire  of  electricity,  they  can  take  to  elec- 
tric trams.  If  they  are  unmoved  by  music, 
they  can  take  to  drink.  If  they  will  not  work 
so  as  to  get  a  prize  from  their  school,  they 
may  work  to  get  a  prize  from  Prizy  Bits.  If 
they  cannot  learn  enough  about  law  and  citi- 
zenship to  please  the  teacher,  they  learn 
enough  about  them  to  avoid  the  policeman. 
If  they  will  not  learn  history  forwards  from 
the  right  end  in  the  history  books,  they  will 
learn  it  backwards  from  the  wrong  end  in  the 
party  newspapers.  And  this  is  the  tragedy  of 
the  whole  affair:  that  the  London  poor,  a 
particularly  quick-witted  and  civilized  class, 
learn  everything  tail  foremost,  learn  even  what 
is  right  in  the  way  of  what  is  wrong.  They 


HUMILITY   OF   MRS.   GRUNDY 

do  not  see  the  first  principles  of  law  in  a  law 
book ;  they  only  see  its  last  results  in  the  police 
news.  They  do  not  see  the  truths  of  politics 
in  a  general  survey.  They  only  see  the  lies 
of  politics,  at  a  General  Election. 

But  whatever  be  the  pathos  of  the  London 
poor,  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  being  unedu~ 
cated.  So  far  from  being  without  guidance, 
they  are  guided  constantly,  earnestly,  excit- 
edly; only  guided  wrong.  The  poor  are  not 
at  all  neglected,  they  are  merely  oppressed; 
nay,  rather  they  are  persecuted.  There  are 
no  people  in  London  who  are  not  appealed  to 
by  the  rich ;  the  appeals  of  the  rich  shriek  from 
every  hoarding  and  shout  from  every  hustings. 
For  it  should  always  be  remembered  that  the 
queer,  abrupt  ugliness  of  our  streets  and  cos- 
tumes are  not  the  creation  of  democracy,  but 
of  aristocracy.  The  House  of  Lords  objected 
to  the  Embankment  being  disfigured  by  trams. 
But  most  of  the  rich  men  who  disfigure  the 
street-walls  with  their  wares  are  actually  in  the 
House  of  Lords.  The  peers  make  the  country 
265 


HUMILITY   OF   MRS.   GRUNDY 

seats  beautiful  by  making  the  town  streets  hide- 
ous. This,  however,  is  parenthetical.  The 
point  is,  that  the  poor  in  London  are  not  left 
alone,  but  rather  deafened  and  bewildered  with 
raucous  and  despotic  advice.  They  are  not 
like  sheep  without  a  shepherd.  They  are  more 
like  one  sheep  whom  twenty-seven  shepherds  are 
shouting  at.  All  the  newspapers,  all  the  new 
advertisements,  all  the  new  medicines  and  new 
theologies,  all  the  glare  and  blare  of  the  gas 
and  brass  of  modern  times — it  is  against  these 
that  the  national  school  must  bear  up  if  it 
can.  I  will  not  question  that  our  elementary 
education  is  better  than  barbaric  ignorance. 
But  there  is  no  barbaric  ignorance.  I  do  not 
doubt  that  our  schools  would  be  good  for  un- 
instructed  b'oys.  But  there  are  no  uninstructed 
boys.  A  modern  London,  school  ought  not 
merely  to  be  clearer,  kindlier,  more  clever  and 
more  rapid  than  ignorance  and  darkness.  It 
must  also  be  clearer  than  a  picture  postcard, 
cleverer  than  a  Limerick  competition,  quicker 
than  the  tram,  and  kindlier  than  the  tavern. 
266 


HUMILITY   OF   MRS.   GRUNDY 

The  school,  in  fact,  has  the  responsibility  of 
universal  rivalry.  We  need  not  deny  that 
everywhere  there  is  a  light  that  must  conquer 
darkness.  But  here  we  demand  a  light  that 
can  conquer  light. 


267 


vin 

THE    BROKEN    RAINBOW 

I  WILL  take  one  case  that  will  serve  both  as 
symbol  and  example:  the  case  of  color.  We 
hear  the  realists  (those  sentimental  fellows) 
talking  about  the  gray  streets  and  the  gray 
lives  of  the  poor.  But  whatever  the  poor 
streets  are  they  are  not  gray;  but  motley, 
striped,  spotted,  piebald  and  patched  like  a 
quilt.  Hoxton  is  not  aesthetic  enough  to  be 
monochrome ;  and  there  is  nothing  of  the  Celtic 
twilight  about  it.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  a  Lon- 
don gutter-boy  walks  unscathed  among  fur- 
naces of  color.  Watch  him  walk  along  a  line 
of  hoardings,  and  you  will  see  him  now  against 
glowing  green,  like  a  traveler  in  a  tropic  forest ; 
now  black  like  a  bird  against  the  burning  blue 
of  the  Midi;  now  passant  across  a  field  gules, 
like  the  golden  leopards  of  England.  He 
ought  to  understand  the  irrational  rapture  of 
268 


THE    BROKEN    RAINBOW 

that  cry  of  Mr.  Stephen  Phillips  about  "that 
bluer  blue,  that  greener  green."  There  is  no 
blue  much  bluer  than  Reckitt's  Blue  and  no 
blacking  blacker  than  Day  and  Martin's;  no 
more  emphatic  yellow  than  that  of  Colman's 
Mustard.  If,  despite  this  chaos  of  color,  like 
a  shattered  rainbow,  the  spirit  of  the  small 
boy  is  not  exactly  intoxicated  with  art  and  cul- 
ture, the  cause  certainly  does  not  lie  in  univer- 
sal grayness  or  the  mere  starving  of  his  senses. 
It  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  colors  are  pre- 
sented in  the  wrong  connection,  on  the  wrong 
scale,  and,  above  all,  from  the  wrong  motive. 
It  is  not  colors  he  lacks,  but  a  philosophy  of 
colors.  In  short,  there  is  nothing  wrong  with 
Reckitt's  Blue  except  that  it  is  not  Reckitt's. 
Blue  does  not  belong  to  Reckitt,  but  to  the 
sky ;  black  does  not  belong  to  Day  and  Martin, 
but  to  the  abyss.  Even  the  finest  posters  are 
only  very  little  things  on  a  very  large  scale. 
There  is  something  specially  irritant  in  this 
way  about  the  iteration  of  advertisements  of 
mustard:  a  condiment,  a  small  luxury;  a  thing 
269 


THE     BROKEN     RAINBOW 

in  its  nature  not  to  be  taken  in  quantity. 
There  is  a  special  irony  in  these  starving  streets 
to  see  such  a  great  deal  of  mustard  to  such 
very  little  meat.  Yellow  is  a  bright  pigment; 
mustard  is  a  pungent  pleasure.  But  to  look 
at  these  seas  of  yellow  is  to  be  like  a  man  who 
should  swallow  gallons  of  mustard.  He  would 
either  die,  or  lose  the  taste  of  mustard  alto- 
gether. 

Now  suppose  we  compare  these  gigantic 
trivialities  on  the  hoardings  with  those  tiny 
and  tremendous  pictures  in  which  the  mediarvals 
recorded  their  dreams;  little  pictures  where  the 
blue  sky  is  hardly  longer  than  a  single  sapphire, 
and  the  fires  of  judgment  only  a  pigmy  patch 
of  gold.  The  difference  here  is  not  merely 
that  poster  art  is  in  its  nature  more  hasty  than 
illumination  art;  it  is  not  even  merely  that  the 
ancient  artist  was  serving  the  Lord  while  the 
modern  artist  is  serving  the  lords.  It  is  that 
the  old  artist  contrived  to  convey  an  impression 
that  colors  really  were  significant  and  precious 
things,  like  jewels  and  talismanic  stones.  The 
270 


THE     BROKEN     RAINBOW 

solor  was  often  arbitrary;  but  it  was  always 
authoritative.  If  a  bird  was  blue,  if  a  tree  was 
golden,  if  a  fish  was  silver,  if  a  cloud  was  scar- 
let, the  artist  managed  to  convey  that  these 
colors  were  important  and  almost  painfully  in- 
tense; all  the  red  red-hot  and  all  the  gold  tried 
in  the  fire.  Now  that  is  the  spirit  touching 
color  which  the  schools  must  recover  and  pro- 
tect if  they  are  really  to  give  the  children  any 
imaginative  appetite  or  pleasure  in  the  thing. 
It  is  not  so  much  an  indulgence  in  color;  it 
is  rather,  if  anything,  a  sort  of  fiery  thrift.  It 
fenced  in  a  green  field  in  heraldry  as  straitly 
as  a  green  field  in  peasant  proprietorship.  It 
would  not  fling  away  gold  leaf  any  more  than 
gold  coin ;  it  would  not  heedlessly  pour  out 
purple  or  crimson,  any  more  than  it  would  spill 
good  wine  or  shed  blameless  blood.  That  is 
the  hard  task  before  educationists  in  this 
special  matter;  they  have  to  teach  people  to 
relish  colors  like  liquors.  They  have  the  heavy 
business  of  turning  drunkards  into  wine  tasters. 
If  even  the  twentieth  century  succeeds  in  doing 
271 


THE     BROKEN    RAINBOW 

these  things,  it  will  almost  catch  up  with  the 
twelfth. 

The  principle  covers,  however,  the  whole  of 
modern  life.  Morris  and  the  merely  aesthetic 
medievalists  always  indicated  that  a  crowd  in 
the  time  of  Chaucer  would  have  been  brightly 
clad  and  glittering,  compared  with  a  crowd  in 
the  time  of  Queen  Victoria.  I  am  not  so  sure 
that  the  real  distinction  is  here.  There  would 
be  brown  frocks  of  friars  in  the  first  scene  as 
well  as  brown  bowlers  of  clerks  in  the  second. 
There  would  be  purple  plumes  of  factory  girls 
in  the  second  scene  as  well  as  purple  lenten 
vestments  in  the  first.  There  would  be  white 
waistcoats  against  white  ermine;  gold  watch 
chains  against  gold  lions.  The  real  differ- 
ence is  this :  that  the  brown  earth-color  of  the 
monk's  coat  was  instinctively  chosen  to  express 
labor  and  humility,  whereas  the  brown  color 
of  the  clerk's  hat  was  not  chosen  to  express 
anything.  The  monk  did  mean  to  say  that 
he  robed  himself  in  dust.  I  am  sure  the  clerk 
does  not  mean  to  say  that  he  crowns  himself 
272 


THE     BROKEN     RAINBOW 

with  clay.  He  is  not  putting  dust  on  his  head, 
as  the  only  diadem  of  man.  Purple,  at  once 
rich  and  somber,  does  suggest  a  triumph  tem- 
porarily eclipsed  by  a  tragedy.  But  the  fac- 
tory girl  does  not  intend  her  hat  to  express 
a  triumph  temporarily  eclipsed  by  a  tragedy ; 
far  from  it.  White  ermine  was  meant  to  ex- 
press moral  purity;  white  waistcoats  were  not. 
Gold  lions  do  suggest  a  flaming  magnanimity; 
gold  watch  chains  do  not.  The  point  is  not 
that  we  have  lost  the  material  hues,  but  that 
we  have  lost  the  trick  of  turning  them  to  the 
best  advantage.  We  are  not  like  children  who 
have  lost  their  paint-box  and  are  left  alone 
with  a  gray  lead-pencil.  We  are  like  children 
who  have  mixed  all  the  colors  in  the  paint-box 
together  and  lost  the  paper  of  instructions. 
Even  then  (I  do  not  deny)  one  has  some  fun. 
Now  this  abundance  of  colors  and  loss  of 
a  color  scheme  is  a  pretty  perfect  parable  of 
all  that  is  wrong  with  our  modern  ideals  and 
especially  with  our  modern  education.  It  is 
the  same  with  ethical  education,  economic  edu- 
273 


THE     BROKEN     RAINBOW 

cation,  every  sort  of  education.  The  growing 
London  child  will  find  no  lack  of  highly  con- 
troversial teachers  who  will  teach  him  that  ge- 
ography means  painting  the  map  red;  that 
economics  means  taxing  the  foreigner;  that 
patriotism  means  the  peculiarly  un-English 
habit  of  flying  a  flag  on  Empire  Day.  In 
mentioning  these  examples  specially  I  do  not 
mean  to  imply  that  there  are  no  similar  crudi- 
ties and  popular  fallacies  upon  the  other  politi- 
cal side.  I  mention  them  because  they  consti- 
tute a  very  special  and  arresting  feature  of  the 
situation.  I  mean  this,  that  there  were  always 
Radical  revolutionists ;  but  now  there  are  Tory 
revolutionists  also.  The  modern  Conservative 
no  longer  conserves.  He  is  avowedly  an  inno- 
vator. Thus  all  the  current  defenses  of  the 
House  of  Lords  which  describe  it  as  a  bulwark 
against  the  mob,  are  intellectually  done  for; 
the  bottom  has  fallen  out  of  them;  because 
on  five  or  six  of  the  most  turbulent  topics  of 
the  day,  the  House  of  Lords  is  a  mob  itself; 
and  exceedingly  likely  to  behave  like  ona- 
274 


IX 

THE    NEED    FOR    NARROWNESS 

THROUGH  all  this  chaos,  then,  we  come  back 
once  more  to  our  main  conclusion.  The  true 
task  of  culture  to-day  is  not  a  task  of  expan- 
sion, but  very  decidedly  of  selection — and  re- 
jection. The  educationist  must  find  a  creed 
and  teach  it.  Even  if  it  be  not  a  theological 
creed,  it  must  still  be  as  fastidious  and  as  firm 
as  theology.  In  short,  it  must  be  orthodox. 
The  teacher  may  think  it  antiquated  to  have 
to  decide  precisely  between  the  faith  of  Calvin 
and  of  Laud,  the  faith  of  Aquinas  and  of 
Swedenborg ;  but  he  still  has  to  choose  between 
the  faith  of  Kipling  and  of  Shaw,  between  the 
world  of  Blatchford  and  of  General  Booth. 
Call  it,  if  you  will,  a  narrow  question  whether 
your  child  shall  be  brought  up  by  vicar  or  the 
minister  or  the  popish  priest.  You  have  still 
to  face  that  larger,  more  liberal,  more  highly 
275 


NEED     FOR     NARROWNESS 

civilized  question,  of  whether  he  shall  be  brought 
up  by  Harmsworth  or  by  Pearson,  by  Mr. 
Eustace  Miles  with  his  Simple  Life  or  Mr.  Peter 
Keary  with  his  Strenuous  Life;  whether  he 
shall  most  eagerly  read  Miss  Annie  S.  Swan 
or  Mr.  Bart  Kennedy;  in  short,  whether  he 
shall  end  up  in  the  mere  violence  of  the  S.  D. 
F.,  or  in  the  mere  vulgarity  of  the  Primrose 
League.  They  say  that  nowadays  the  creeds 
are  crumbling;  I  doubt  it,  but  at  least  the 
sects  are  increasing;  and  education  must  now 
be  sectarian  education,  merely  for  practical 
purposes.  Out  of  all  this  throng  of  theories 
it  must  somehow  select  a  theory;  out  of  all 
these  thundering  voices  it  must  manage  to  hear 
a  voice ;  out  of  all  this  awful  and  aching  battle 
of  blinding  lights,  without  one  shadow  to  give 
shape  to  them,  it  must  manage  somehow  to 
trace  and  to  track  a  star. 

I  have  spoken  so  far  of  popular  education, 

which  began   too  vague  and   vast   and  which 

therefore  has   accomplished   little.     But   as   it 

happens  there  is  in  England  something  to  com- 

276 


NEED     FOR     NARROWNESS 

pare  it  with.  There  is  an  institution,  or  class 
of  institutions,  which  began  with  the  same  pop- 
ular object,  which  has  since  followed  a  much 
narrower  object;  but  which  had  the  great  ad- 
vantage that  it  did  follow  some  object,  unlike 
our  modern  elementary  schools. 

In  all  these  problems  I  should  urge  the  solu- 
tion which  is  positive,  or,  as  silly  people  say, 
"  optimistic."  I  should  set  my  face,  that  is, 
against  most  of  the  solutions  that  are  solely 
negative  and  abolitionist.  Most  educators  of 
the  poor  seem  to  think  that  they  have  to  teach 
the  poor  man  not  to  drink.  I  should  be  quite 
content  if  they  teach  him  to  drink;  for  it  is 
mere  ignorance  about  how  to  drink  and  when 
to  drink  that  is  accountable  for  most  of  his 
tragedies.  I  do  not  propose  (like  some  of  my 
revolutionary  friends)  that  we  should  abolish 
the  public  schools.  I  propose  the  much  more 
lurid  and  desperate  experiment  that  we  should 
make  them  public.  I  do  not  wish  to  make  Par- 
liament stop  working,  but  rather  to  make  it 
work;  not  to  shut  up  churches,  but  rather  to 
277 


NEED    FOR    NARROWNESS 

open  them ;  not  to  put  out  the  lamp  of  learn- 
ing or  destroy  the  hedge  of  property,  but  only 
to  make  some  rude  effort  to  make  universities 
fairly  universal  and  property  decently  proper. 
In  many  cases,  let  it  be  remembered,  such 
action  is  not  merely  going  back  to  the  old 
ideal,  but  is  even  going  back  to  the  old  reality. 
It  would  be  a  great  step  forward  for  the  gin 
shop  to  go  back  to  the  inn.  It  is  incontro- 
vertibly  true  that  to  medisevalize  the  public 
schools  would  be  to  democratize  the  public 
schools.  Parliament  did  once  really  mean  (as 
its  name  seems  to  imply)  a  place  where  people 
were  allowed  to  talk.  It  is  only  lately  that 
the  general  increase  of  efficiency,  that  is,  of  the 
Speaker,  has  made  it  mostly  a  place  where  peo- 
ple are  prevented  from  talking.  The  poor  do 
not  go  to  the  modern  church,  but  they  went 
to  the  ancient  church  all  right ;  and  if  the  com- 
mon man  in  the  past  had  a  grave  respect  for 
property,  it  may  conceivably  have  been  because 
he  sometimes  had  some  of  his  own.  I  therefore 
can  claim  that  I  have  no  vulgar  itch  of  inno- 
278 


NEED    FOR    NARROWNESS 

vation  in  anything  I  say  about  any  of  these 
institutions.  Certainly  I  have  none  in  that 
particular  one  which  I  am  now  obliged  to  pick 
out  of  the  list ;  a  type  of  institution  to  which 
I  have  genuine  and  personal  reasons  for  being 
friendly  and  grateful :  I  mean  the  great  Tudor 
foundations,  the  public  schools  of  England. 
They  have  been  praised  for  a  great  many 
things,  mostly,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  praised  by 
themselves  and  their  children.  And  yet  for 
some  reason  no  one  has  ever  praised  them  for 
the  one  really  convincing  reason. 


279 


THE    CASE     FOR    THE     PUBLIC 
SCHOOLS 

THE  word  success  can  of  course  be  used  in  two 
senses.  It  may  be  used  with  reference  to  a 
thing  serving  its  immediate  and  peculiar  pur- 
pose, as  of  a  wheel  going  around;  or  it  can  be 
used  with  reference  to  a  thing  adding  to  the 
general  welfare,  as  of  a  wheel  being  a  useful 
discovery.  It  is  one  thing  to  say  that  Smith's 
flying  machine  is  a  failure,  and  quite  another 
to  say  that  Smith  has  failed  to  make  a  flying 
machine.  Now  this  is  very  broadly  the  differ- 
ence between  the  old  English  public  schools 
and  the  new  democratic  schools.  Perhaps  the 
old  public  schools  are  (as  I  personally  think 
they  are)  ultimately  weakening  the  country 
rather  than  strengthening  it,  and  are  there- 
fore, in  that  ultimate  sense,  inefficient.  But 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  being  efficiently  ineffi- 
cient. You  can  make  your  flying  ship  so  that 
280 


CASE  FOR  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS 

it  flies,  even  if  you  also  make  it  so' that  it  kills 
you.  Now  the  public-school  system  may  not 
work  satisfactorily,  but  it  works ;  the  public 
schools  may  not  achieve  what  we  want,  but  they 
achieve  what  they  want.  The  popular  elemen- 
tary schools  do  not  in  that  sense  achieve  any- 
thing at  all.  It  is  very  difficult  to  point  to 
any  guttersnipe  in  the  street  and  say  that  he 
embodies  the  ideal  for  which  popular  education 
has  been  working,  in  the  sense  that  the  fresh- 
faced,  foolish  boy  in  "  Etons  "  does  embody  the 
ideal  for  which  the  headmasters  of  Harrow  and 
Winchester  have  been  working.  The  aristo- 
cratic educationists  have  the  positive  purpose 
of  turning  out  gentlemen ;  and  they  do  turn 
out  gentlemen,  even  when  they  expel  them.  The 
popular  educationists  would  say  that  they  had 
the  far  nobler  idea  of  turning  out  citizens.  I 
concede  that  it  is  a  much  nobler  idea,  but  where 
are  the  citizens?  I  know  that  the  boy  in 
"  Etons  "  is  stiff  with  a  rather  silly  and  senti- 
mental stoicism,  called  being  a  man  of  the 
world.  I  do  not  fancy  that  the  errand-boy  is 
281 


CASE  FOR  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS 

rigid  with  that  republican  stoicism  that  is  called 
being  a  citizen.  The  schoolboy  will  really  say 
with  fresh  and  innocent  hauteur,  "  I  am  an 
English  gentleman."  I  cannot  so  easily  pic- 
ture the  errand-boy  drawing  up  his  head  to 
the  stars  and  answering,  "Romanus  civis 
sum.**  Let  it  be  granted  that  our  elementary 
teachers  are  teaching  the  very  broadest  code 
of  morals,  while  our  great  headmasters  are 
teaching  only  the  narrowest  code  of  manners. 
Let  it  be  granted  that  both  these  things  are 
'being  taught.  But  only  one  of  them  is  being 
learned. 

It  is  always  said  that  great  reformers  or 
masters  of  events  can  manage  to  bring  about 
some  specific  and  practical  reforms,  but  that 
they  never  fulfill  their  visions  or  satisfy  their 
souls.  I  believe  there  is  a  real  sense  in  which 
this  apparent  platitude  is  quite  untrue.  By  a 
strange  inversion  the  political  idealist  often 
does  not  get  what  he  asks  for,  but  does  get 
what  he  wants.  The  silent  pressure  of  his  ideal 
lasts  much  longer  and  reshapes  the  world  much 
282 


CASE  FOR  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS 

more  than  the  actualities  by  which  he  at- 
tempted to  suggest  it.  What  perishes  is  the 
letter,  which  he  thought  so  practical.  What 
endures  is  the  spirit,  which  he  felt  to  be  unat- 
tainable and  even  unutterable.  It  is  exactly 
his  schemes  that  are  not  fulfilled;  it  is  exactly 
his  vision  that  is  fulfilled.  Thus  the  ten  or 
twelve  paper  constitutions  of  the  French  Revo- 
lution, which  seemed  so  business-like  to  the 
framers  of  them,  seem  to  us  to  have  flown  away 
on  the  wind  as  the  wildest  fancies.  What  has 
not  flown  away,  what  is  a  fixed  fact  in  Europe, 
is  the  ideal  and  vision.  The  Republic,  the  idea 
of  a  land  full  of  mere  citizens  all  with  some 
minimum  of  manners  and  minimum  of  wealth, 
the  vision  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  reality 
of  the  twentieth.  So  I  think  it  will  generally 
be  with  the  creator  of  social  things,  desirable 
or  undesirable.  All  his  schemes  will  fail,  all  his 
tools  break  in  his  hands.  His  compromises  will 
collapse,  his  concessions  will  be  useless.  He 
must  brace  himself  to  bear  his  fate;  he  shall 
have  nothing  but  his  heart's  desire. 
283 


CASE  FOR  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS 

Now  if  one  may  compare  very  small  things 
with  very  great,  one  may  say  that  the  English 
aristocratic  schools  can  claim  something  of  the 
same  sort  of  success  and  solid  splendor  as  the 
French  democratic  politics.  At  least  they  can 
claim  the  same  sort  of  superiority  over  the  dis- 
tracted and  fumbling  attempts  of  modern  Eng- 
land to  establish  democratic  education.  Such 
success  as  has  attended  the  public  schoolboy 
throughout  the  Empire,  a  success  exaggerated 
indeed  by  himself,  but  still  positive  and  a  fact 
of  a  certain  indisputable  shape  and  size,  has 
been  due  to  the  central  and  supreme  circum- 
stance that  the  managers  of  our  public  schools 
did  know  what  sort  of  boy  they  liked.  They 
wanted  something  and  they  got  something;  in- 
stead of  going  to  work  in  the  broad-minded 
manner  and  wanting  everything  and  getting 
nothing. 

The  only  thing  in  question  is  the  quality  of 
the  thing  they  got.  There  is  something  highly 
maddening  in  the  circumstance  that  when  mod- 
£84 


CASE  FOR  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS 

ern  people  attack  an  institution  that  really 
does  demand  reform,  they  always  attack  it  for 
the  wrong  reasons.  Thus  many  opponents  of 
our  public  schools,  imagining  themselves  to  be 
very  democratic,  have  exhausted  themselves  in 
an  unmeaning  attack  upon  the  study  of  Greek. 
I  can  understand  how  Greek  may  be  regarded 
as  useless,  especially  by  those  thirsting  to  throw 
themselves  into  the  cutthroat  commerce  which 
is  the  negation  of  citizenship ;  but  I  do  not 
understand  how  it  can  be  considered  undemo- 
cratic. I  quite  understand  why  Mr.  Carnegie 
has  a  hatred  of  Greek.  It  is  obscurely  founded 
on  the  firm  and  sound  impression  that  in  any 
self-governing  Greek  city  he  would  have  been 
killed.  But  I  cannot  comprehend  Avhy  any 
chance  democrat,  say  Mr.  Quelch,  or  Mr.  Will 
Crooks,  or  Mr.  John  M.  Robertson,  should  be 
opposed  to  people  learning  the  Greek  alphabet, 
which  was  the  alphabet  of  liberty.  Why  should 
Radicals  dislike  Greek?  In  that  language  is 
written  all  the  earliest  and,  Heaven  knows,  the 
285 


CASE  FOR  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS 

most  heroic  history  of  the  Radical  party.  Why 
should  Greek  disgust  a  democrat,  when  the  very 
word  democrat  is  Greek? 

A  similar  mistake,  though  a  less  serious  one, 
is  merely  attacking  the  athletics  of  public 
schools  as  something  promoting  animalism  and 
brutality.  Now  brutality,  in  the  only  immoral 
sense,  is  not  a  vice  of  the  English  public 
schools.  There  is  much  moral  bullying,  owing 
to  the  general  lack  of  moral  courage  in  the 
public-school  atmosphere.  These  schools  do, 
upon  the  whole,  enocurage  physical  courage; 
but  they  do  not  merely  discourage  moral  cour- 
age, they  forbid  it.  The  ultimate  result  of  the 
thing  is  seen  in  the  egregious  English  officer 
who  cannot  even  endure  to  wear  a  bright  uni- 
form except  when  it  is  blurred  and  hidden  in 
the  smoke  of  battle.  This,  like  all  the  affec- 
tations of  our  present  plutocracy,  is  an  entirely 
modern  thing.  It  was  unknown  to  the  old  aris- 
tocrats. The  Black  Prince  would  certainly 
have  asked  that  any  knight  who  had  the  cour- 
age to  lift  his  crest  among  his  enemies,  should 
386 


CASE  FOR  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS 

also  have  the  courage  to  lift  it  among  his 
friends.  As  regards  moral  courage,  then,  it  is 
not  so  much  that  the  public  schools  support  it 
feebly,  as  that  they  suppress  it  firmly.  But 
physical  courage  they  do,  on  the  whole,  sup- 
port; and  physical  courage  is  a  magnificent 
fundamental.  The  one  great,  wise  Englishman 
of  the  eighteenth  century  said  truly  that  if  a 
man  lost  that  virtue  he  could  never  be  sure  of 
keeping  any  other.  Now  it  is  one  of  the  mean 
and  morbid  modern  lies  that  physical  courage 
is  connected  with  cruelty.  The  Tolstoian  and 
Kiplingite  are  nowhere  more  at  one  than  in 
maintaining  this.  They  have,  I  believe,  some 
small  sectarian  quarrel  with  each  other,  the  one 
saying  that  courage  must  be  abandoned  because 
it  is  connected  with  cruelty,  and  the  other  main- 
taining that  cruelty  is  charming  because  it  is 
a  part  of  courage.  But  it  is  all,  thank  God,  a 
lie.  An  energy  and  boldness  of  body  may  make 
a  man  stupid  or  reckless  or  dull  or  drunk  or 
hungry,  but  it  does  not  make  him  spiteful.  And 
we  may  admit  heartily  (without  joining  in  that 
287 


CASE  FOR  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS 

perpetual  praise  which  public-school  men  are 
always  pouring  upon  themselves)  that  this  does 
operate  to  the  removal  of  mere  evil  cruelty  in 
the  public  schools.  English  public-school  life 
is  extremely  like  English  public  life,  for  which 
it  is  the  preparatory  school.  It  is  like  it  spe- 
cially in  this,  that  things  are  either  very  open, 
common  and  conventional,  or  else  are  very  se- 
cret indeed.  Now  there  is  cruelty  in  public 
schools,  just  as  there  is  kleptomania  and  secret 
drinking  and  vices  without  a  name.  But  these 
things  do  not  flourish  in  the  full  daylight  and 
common  consciousness  of  the  school;  and  no 
more  does  cruelty.  A  tiny  trio  of  sullen-looking 
boys  gather  in  corners  and  seem  to  have  some 
ugly  business  always ;  it  may  be  indecent  liter- 
ature, it  may  be  the  beginning  of  drink,  it  may 
occasionally  be  cruelty  to  little  boys.  But  on 
this  stage  the  bully  is  not  a  braggart.  The 
proverb  says  that  bullies  are  always  cowardly, 
but  these  bullies  are  more  than  cowardly ;  they 
are  shy. 

As   a  third  instance  of  the  wrong  form  of 
288 


CASE  FOR  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS 

revolt  against  the  public  schools,  I  may  men- 
tion the  habit  of  using  the  word  aristocracy 
with  a  double  implication.  To  put  the  plain 
truth  as  briefly  as  possible,  if  aristocracy  means 
rule  by  a  rich  ring,  England  has  aristocracy 
and  the  English  public  schools  support  it.  If 
it  means  rule  by  ancient  families  or  flawless 
blood,  England  has  not  got  aristocracy,  and 
the  public  schools  systematically  destroy  it.  In 
these  circles  real  aristocracy,  like  real  democ- 
racy, has  become  bad  form.  A  modern  fash- 
ionable host  dare  not  praise  his  ancestry;  it 
would  so  often  be  an  insult  to  half  the  other 
oligarchs  at  table,  who  have  no  ancestry.  We 
have  said  he  has  not  the  moral  courage  to  wear 
his  uniform ;  still  less  has  he  the  moral  courage 
to  wear  his  coat-of-arms.  The  whole  thing  now 
is  only  a  vague  hotch-potch  of  nice  and  nasty 
gentlemen.  The  nice  gentleman  never  refers  to 
anyone  else's  father,  the  nasty  gentleman  never 
refers  to  his  own.  That  is  the  only  difference; 
the  rest  is  the  public-school  manner.  But  Eton 
and  Harrow  have  to  be  aristocratic  because 
289 


CASE  FOR  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS 

they  consist  so  largely  of  parvenues.  The  pub- 
lic school  is  not  a  sort  of  refuge  for  aristocrats, 
like  an  asylum,  a  place  where  they  go  in  and 
never  come  out.  It  is  a  factory  for  aristocrats ; 
they  come  out  without  ever  having  perceptibly 
gone  in.  The  poor  little  private  schools,  in 
their  old-world,  sentimental,  feudal  style,  used 
to  stick  up  a  notice,  "For  the  Sons  of  Gentle- 
men only."  If  the  public  schools  stuck  up  a 
notice  it  ought  to  be  inscribed,  "  For  the  Fath- 
ers of  Gentlemen  only."  In  two  generations 
they  can  do  the  trick. 


290 


XI 

THE    SCHOOL    FOR    HYPOCRITES 

THESE  are  the  false  accusations ;  the  accusa- 
tion of  classicism,  the  accusation  of  cruelty, 
and  the  accusation  of  an  exclusiveness  based 
on  perfection  of  pedigree.  English  public-school 
boys  are  not  pedants,  they  are  not  torturers ; 
and  they  are  not,  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases, 
people  fiercely  proud  of  their  ancestry,  or  even 
people  with  any  ancestry  to  be  proud  of.  They 
are  taught  to  be  courteous,  to  be  good  tem- 
pered, to  be  brave  in  a  bodily  sense,  to  be  clean 
in  a  bodily  sense;  they  are  generally  kind  to 
animals,  generally  civil  to  servants,  and  to 
anyone  in  any  sense  their  equal,  the  j  oiliest 
companions  on  earth.  Is  there  then  anything 
wrong  in  the  public-school  ideal?  I  think  we 
all  feel  there  is  something  very  wrong  in  it,  but 
a  blinding  network  of  newspaper  phraseology 
obscures  and  entangles  us;  so  that  it  is  hard 
291 


SCHOOL    FOR    HYPOCRITES 

to  trace  to  its  beginning,  beyond  all  words  and 
phases,  the  faults  in  this  great  English  achieve- 
ment. 

Surely,  when  all  is  said,  the  ultimate  objec- 
tion to  the  English  public  school  is  its  utterly 
blatant  and  indecent  disregard  of  the  duty  of 
telling  the  truth.  I  know  there  does  still  linger 
among  maiden  ladies  in  remote  country  houses 
a  notion  that  English  schoolboys  are  taught  to 
tell  the  truth,  but  it  cannot  be  maintained  seri- 
ously for  a  moment.  Very  occasionally,  very 
vaguely,  English  schoolboys  are  told  not  to 
tell  lies,  which  is  a  totally  different  thing.  I 
may  silently  support  all  the  obscene  fictions  and 
forgeries  in  the  universe,  without  once  telling 
a  lie.  I  may  wear  another  man's  coat,  steal 
another  man's  wit,  apostatize  to  another  man's 
creed,  or  poison  another  man's  coffee,  all  with- 
out ever  telling  a  lie.  But  no  English  school- 
boy is  ever  taught  to  tell  the  truth,  for  the 
very  simple  reason  that  he  is  never  taught  to 
desire  the  truth.  From  the  very  first  he  is 
taught  to  be  totally  careless  about  whether  a 
292 


SCHOOL    FOR    HYPOCRITES 

fact  is  a  fact ;  he  is  taught  to  care  only  whether 
the  fact  can  be  used  on  his  "  side  "  when  he  is 
engaged  in  "  playing  the  game."  He  takes 
sides  in  his  Union  debating  society  to  settle 
whether  Charles  I.  ought  to  have  been  killed, 
with  the  same  solemn  and  pompous  frivolity 
with  which  he  takes  sides  in  the  cricket  field  to 
decide  whether  Rugby  or  Westminster  shall 
win.  He  is  never  allowed  to  admit  the  abstract 
notion  of  the  truth,  that  the  match  is  a  mat- 
ter of  what  may  happen,  but  that  Charles  I. 
is  a  matter  of  what  did  happen — or  did  not. 
He  is  Liberal  or  Tory  at  the  general  election 
exactly  as  he  is  Oxford  or  Cambridge  at  the 
boat-race.  He  knows  that  sport  deals  with  the 
unknown ;  he  has  not  even  a  notion  that  pol- 
itics should  deal  with  the  known.  If  anyone 
really  doubts  this  self-evident  proposition,  that 
the  public  schools  definitely  discourage  the  love 
of  truth,  there  is  one  fact  which  I  should  think 
would  settle  him.  England  is  the  country  of 
the  Party  System,  and  it  has  always  been 
chiefly  run  by  public-school  men.  Is  there  any- 
293 


SCHOOL    FOR    HYPOCRITES 

one  out  of  Hanwell  who  will  maintain  that  the 
Party  System,  whatever  its  conveniences  or  in- 
conveniences, could  have  been  created  by  peo- 
ple particularly  fond  of  truth? 

The  very  English  happiness  on  this  point  is 
itself  a  hypocrisy.  When  a  man  really  tells 
the  truth,  the  first  truth  he  tells  is  that  he  him- 
self is  a  liar.  David  said  in  his  haste,  that  is, 
in  his  honesty,  that  all  men  are  liars.  It  was 
afterwards,  in  some  leisurely  official  explana- 
tion, that  he  said  that  Kings  of  Israel  at  least 
told  the  truth.  When  Lord  Curzon  was  Viceroy 
he  delivered  a  moral  lecture  to  the  Indians  on 
their  reputed  indifference  to  veracity,  to  ac- 
tuality and  intellectual  honor.  A  great  many 
people  indignantly  discussed  whether  orientals 
deserved  to  receive  this  rebuke ;  whether  Indians 
were  indeed  in  a  position  to  receive  such  severe 
admonition.  No  one  seemed  to  ask,  as  I  should 
venture  to  ask,  whether  Lord  Curzon  was  in  a 
position  to  give  it.  He  is  an  ordinary  party 
politician;  a  party  politician  means  a  politi- 
cian who  might  have  belonged  to  either  party. 
294 


SCHOOL    FOR    HYPOCRITES 

Being  such  a  person,  he  must  again  and  again, 
at  every  twist  and  turn  of  party  strategy, 
either  have  deceived  others  or  grossly  deceived 
himself.  I  do  not  know  the  East ;  nor  do  I  like 
what  I  know.  I  am  quite  ready  to  believe  that 
when  Lord  Curzon  went  out  he  found  a  very 
false  atmosphere.  I  only  say  it  must  have  been 
something  startlingly  and  chokingly  false  if  it 
was  falser  than  that  English  atmosphere  from 
which  he  came.  The  English  Parliament  ac- 
tually cares  for  everything  except  veracity. 
The  public-school  man  is  kind,  courageous,  po- 
lite, clean,  companionable;  but,  in  the  most 
awful  sense  of  the  words,  the  truth  is  not  in 
him. 

This  weakness  of  untruthfulness  in  the  Eng- 
lish public  schools,  in  the  English  political  sys- 
tem, and  to  some  extent  in  the  English  charac- 
ter, is  a  weakness  which  necessarily  produces  a 
curious  crop  of  superstitions,  of  lying  legends, 
of  evident  delusions  clung  to  through  low  spir- 
itual self-indulgence.  There  are  so  many  of 
these  public-school  superstitions  that  I  have 
295 


SCHOOL    FOR    HYPOCRITES 

here  only  space  for  one  of  them,  which  may  be 
called  the  superstition  of  soap.  It  appears  to 
have  been  shared  by  the  ablutionary  Pharisees, 
who  resembled  the  English  public-school  aris- 
tocrats in  so  many  respects :  in  their  care  about 
club  rules  and  traditions,  in  their  offensive  op- 
timism at  the  expense  of  other  people,  and 
above  all  in  their  unimaginative  plodding  pa- 
triotism in  the  worst  interests  of  their  country. 
Now  the  old  human  common  sense  about  wash- 
ing is  that  it  is  a  great  pleasure.  Water 
(applied  externally)  is  a  splendid  thing,  like 
wine.  Sybarites  bathe  in  wine,  and  Noncon- 
formists drink  water;  but  we  are  not  concerned 
with  these  frantic  exceptions.  Washing  being 
a  pleasure,  it  stands  to  reason  that  rich  people 
can  afford  it  more  than  poor  people,  and  as 
long  as  this  was  recognized  all  was  well;  and 
it  was  very  right  that  rich  people  should  offer 
baths  to  poor  people,  as  they  might  offer  any 
other  agreeable  thing — a  drink  or  a  donkey 
ride.  But  one  dreadful  day,  somewhere  about 
the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  somebody 
296 


SCHOOL    FOR    HYPOCRITES 

discovered  (somebody  pretty  well  off)  the  two 
great  modern  truths,  that  washing  is  a  virtue 
in  the  rich  and  therefore  a  duty  in  the  poor. 
For  a  duty  is  a  virtue  that  one  can't  do.  And 
a  virtue  is  generally  a  duty  that  one  can  do 
quite  easily;  like  the  bodily  cleanliness  of  the 
upper  classes.  But  in  the  public-school  tradi- 
tion of  public  life,  soap  has  become  creditable 
simply  because  it  is  pleasant.  Baths  are  rep- 
resented as  a  part  of  the  decay  of  the  Roman 
Empire ;  but  the  same  baths  are  represented  as 
part  of  the  energy  and  rejuvenation  of  the 
British  Empire.  There  are  distinguished  pub- 
lic-school men,  bishops,  dons,  headmasters,  and 
high  politicians,  who,  in  the  course  of  the  eu- 
logies which  from  time  to  time  they  pass  upon 
themselves,  have  actually  identified  physical 
cleanliness  with  moral  purity.  They  say  (if  I 
remember  rightly)  that  a  public-school  man  is 
clean  inside  and  out.  As  if  everyone  did  not 
know  that  while  saints  can  afford  to  be  dirty, 
seducers  have  to  be  clean.  As  if  everyone  did 
not  know  that  the  harlot  must  be  clean,  because 
297 


SCHOOL    FOR    HYPOCRITES 

it  is  her  business  to  captivate,  while  the  good 
wife  may  be  dirty,  because  it  is  her  business  to 
clean.  As  if  we  did  not  all  know  that  whenever 
God's  thunder  cracks  above  us,  it  is  very  likely 
indeed  to  find  the  simplest  man  in  a  muck 
cart  and  the  most  complex  blackguard  in  a 
bath. 

There  are  other  instances,  of  course,  of  this 
oily  trick  of  turning  the  pleasures  of  a  gentle- 
man into  the  virtues  of  an  Anglo-Saxon. 
Sport,  like  soap,  is  an  admirable  thing,  but, 
like  soap,  it  is  an  agreeable  thing.  And  it  does 
not  sum  up  all  mortal  merits  to  be  a  sports- 
man playing  the  game  in  a  world  where  it  is  so 
often  necessary  to  be  a  workman  doing  the 
work.  By  all  means  let  a  gentleman  congrat- 
ulate himself  that  he  has  not  lost  his  natural 
love  of  pleasure,  as  against  the  blase,  and  un- 
childlike.  But  when  one  has  the  childlike  joy 
it  is  best  to  have  also  the  childlike  unconscious- 
ness ;  and  I  do  not  think  we  should  have  special 
affection  for  the  little  boy  who  everlastingly 
explained  that  it  was  his  duty  to  play  Hide 
298 


SCHOOL    FOR    HYPOCRITES 

and  Seek  and  one  of  his  family  virtues  to  be 
prominent  in  Puss  in  the  Corner. 

Another  such  irritating  hypocrisy  is  the 
oligarchic  attitude  towards  mendicity  as 
against  organized  charity.  Here  again,  as  in 
the  case  of  cleanliness  and  of  athletics,  the 
attitude  would  be  perfectly  human  and  intel- 
ligible if  it  were  not  maintained  as  a  merit. 
Just  as  the  obvious  thing  about  soap  is  that 
it  is  a  convenience,  so  the  obvious  thing  about 
beggars  is  that  they  are  an  inconvenience. 
The  rich  would  deserve  very  little  blame  if  they 
simply  said  that  they  never  dealt  directly  with 
beggars,  because  in  modern  urban  civilization 
it  is  impossible  to  deal  directly  with  beggars ; 
or  if  not  impossible,  at  least  very  difficult.  But 
these  people  do  not  refuse  money  to  beggars  on 
the  ground  that  such  charity  is  difficult.  They 
refuse  it  on  the  grossly  hypocritical  ground 
that  such  charity  is  easy.  They  say,  with  the 
most  grotesque  gravity,  "Anyone  can  put  his 
hand  in  his  pocket  and  give  a  poor  man  a 
penny ;  but  we,  we  philanthropists,  go  home  and 
299 


SCHOOL    FOR    HYPOCRITES 

brood  and  travail  over  the  poor  man's  troubles 
until  we  have  discovered  exactly  what  jail,  re- 
formatory, workhouse,  or  lunatic  asylum  it  will 
really  be  best  for  him  to  go  to."  This  is  all 
sheer  lying.  They  do  not  brood  about  the  man 
when  they  get  home,  and  if  they  did  it  would 
not  alter  the  original  fact  that  their  motive  for 
discouraging  beggars  is  the  perfectly  rational 
one  that  beggars  are  a  bother.  A  man  may 
easily  be  forgiven  for  not  doing  this  or  that 
incidental  act  of  charity,  especially  when  the 
question  is  as  genuinely  difficult  as  is  the  case 
of  mendicity.  But  there  is  something  quite 
pestilently  Pecksniffian  about  shrinking  from  a 
hard  task  on  the  plea  that  it  is  not  hard 
enough.  If  any  man  will  really  try  talking  to 
the  ten  beggars  who  come  to  his  door  he  will 
soon  find  out  whether  it  is  really  so  much  easier 
than  the  labor  of  writing  a  check  for  a  hospital. 


300 


XII 

THE  STALENESS  OF  THE  NEW 
SCHOOLS 

FOR  this  deep  and  disabling  reason  therefore, 
its  cynical  and  abandoned  indifference  to  the 
truth,  the  English  public  school  does  not  pro- 
vide us  with  the  ideal  that  we  require.  We 
can  only  ask  its  modern  critics  to  remember 
that  right  or  wrong  the  thing  can  be  done : 
the  factory  is  working,  the  wheels  are  going 
around,  the  gentlemen  are  being  produced,  with 
their  soap,  cricket  and  organized  charity  all 
complete.  And  in  this,  as  we  have  said  before, 
the  public  school  really  has  an  advantage  over 
all  the  other  educational  schemes  of  our  time-. 
You  can  pick  out  a  public-school  man  in  any  of 
the  many  companies  into  which  they  stray,  from 
a  Chinese  opium  den  to  a  German-Jewish 
dinner-party.  But  I  doubt  if  you  could  tell 
which  little  match  girl  had  been  brought  up  by 
301 


NEW     SCHOOLS 

undenominational  religion  and  which  by  secu- 
lar education.  The  great  English  aristocracy 
which  has  ruled  us  since  the  Reformation  is 
really,  in  this  sense,  a  model  to  the  moderns. 
It  did  have  an  ideal,  and  therefore  it  has  pro- 
duced a  reality. 

We  may  repeat  here  that  these  pages  pro- 
pose mainly  to  show  one  thing:  that  progress 
ought  to  be  based  on  principle,  while  our  mod- 
ern progress  is  mostly  based  on  precedent.  We 
go,  not  by  what  may  be  affirmed  in  theory,  but 
by  what  has  been  already  admitted  in  practice. 
That  is  why  the  Jacobites  are  the  last  Tories 
in  history  with  whom  a  high-spirited  person 
can  have  much  sympathy.  They  wanted  a  spe- 
cific thing;  they  were  ready  to  go  forward  for 
it,  and  so  they  were  also  ready  to  go  back  for 
it.  But  modern  Tories  have  only  the  dullness 
of  defending  situations  that  they  had  not  the 
excitement  of  creating.  Revolutionists  make  a 
reform,  Conservatives  only  conserve  the  reform. 
They  never  reform  the  reform,  which  is  often 
very  much  wanted.  Just  as  the  rivalry  of  arma- 
302 


NEW     SCHOOLS 

merits  is  only  a  sort  of  sulky  plagiarism,  so  the 
rivalry  of  parties  is  only  a  sort  of  sulky  in- 
heritance. Men  have  votes,  so  women  must 
soon  have  votes ;  poor  children  are  taught  by 
force,  so  they  must  soon  be  fed  by  force ;  the 
police  shut  public  houses  by  twelve  o'clock,  so 
soon  they  must  shut  them  by  eleven  o'clock ; 
children  stop  at  school  till  they  are  fourteen, 
so  soon  they  will  stop  till  they  are  forty.  No 
gleam  of  reason,  nd  momentary  return  to  first 
principles,  no  abstract  asking  of  any  obvious 
question,  can  interrupt  this  mad  and  monoto- 
nous gallop  of  mere  progress  by  precedent.  It 
is  a  good  way  to  prevent  real  revolution.  By 
this  logic  of  events,  the  Radical  gets  as  much 
into  a  rut  as  the  Conservative.  We  meet  one 
hoary  old  lunatic  who  says  his  grandfather 
told  him  to  .stand  by  one  stile.  We  meet  an- 
other hoary  old  lunatic  whc  says  his  grand- 
father told  him  only  to  walk  along  one  lane. 
I  say  we  may  repeat  here  this  primary  part 
of  the  argument,  because  we  have  just  now 
come  to  the  place  where  it  is  most  startlingly 
303 


NEW     SCHOOLS 

*nd  strongly  shown.  The  final  proof  that  our 
elementary  schools  have  no  definite  ideal  of  their 
own  is  the  fact  that  they  so  openly  imitate  the 
ideals  of  the  public  schools.  In  the  elementary 
schools  we  have  all  the  ethical  prejudices  and 
exaggerations  of  Eton  and  Harrow  carefully 
copied  for  people  to  whom  they  do  not  even 
roughly  apply.  We  have  the  same  wildly  dis- 
proportionate doctrine  of  the  effect  of  physical 
cleanliness  on  moral  character.  Educators  and 
educational  politicians  declare,  amid  warm 
cheers,  that  cleanliness  is  far  more  important 
than  all  the  squabbles  about  moral  and  religious 
training.  It  would  really  seem  that  so  long  as 
a  little  boy  washes  his  hands  it  does  not  matter 
whether  he  is  washing  off  his  mother's  jam  or 
his  brother's  gore.  We  have  the  same  grossly  in- 
sincere pretense  that  sport  always  encourages  a 
sense  of  honor,  when  we  know  that  it  often  ruins 
it.  Above  all,  we  have  the  same  great  upper- 
class  assumption  that  things  are  done  best  by 
large  institutions  handling  large  sums  of  money 
and  ordering  everybody  about ;  and  that  trivial 
304 


NEW     SCHOOLS 

and  impulsive  charity  is  in  some  way  contemp- 
tible. As  Mr.  Blatchford  says,  "  The  world 
does  not  want  piety,  but  soap — and  Socialism." 
Piety  is  one  of  the  popular  virtues,  whereas 
soap  and  Socialism  are  two  hobbies  of  the  upper 
middle  class. 

These  "  healthy  "  ideals,  as  they  are  called, 
which  our  politicians  and  schoolmasters  have 
borrowed  from  the  aristocratic  schools  and 
applied  to  the  democratic,  are  by  no  means 
particularly  appropriate  to  an  impoverished 
democracy.  A  vague  admiration  for  organized 
government  and  a  vague  distrust  of  individual 
aid  cannot  be  made  to  fit  in  at  all  into  the  lives 
of  people  among  whom  kindness  means  lending 
a  saucepan  and  honor  means  keeping  out  of 
the  workhouse.  It  resolves  itself  either  into 
discouraging  that  system  of  prompt  and  patch- 
work generosity  which  is  a  daily  glory  of  the 
poor,  or  else  into  hazy  advice  to  people  who 
have  no  money  not  to  give  it  recklessly  away. 
Nor  is  the  exaggerated  glory  of  athletics,  de- 
fensible enough  in  dealing  with  the  rich  who, 
305 


NEW     SCHOOLS 

if  they  did  not  romp  and  race,  would  eat  and 
drink  unwholesomely,  by  any  means  so  much  to 
the  point  when  applied  to  Deople,  most  of  whom 
will  take  a  great  deal  of  exercise  anyhow,  with 
spade  or  hammer,  pickax  or  saw.  And  for  the 
third  case,  of  washing,  it  is  obvious  that  the 
same  sort  of  rhetoric  about  corporeal  dainti- 
ness which  is  proper  to  an  ornamental  class 
cannot,  merely  as  it  stands,  be  applicable  to  a 
dustman.  A  gentleman  is  expected  to  be  sub- 
stantially spotless  all  the  time.  But  it  is  no 
more  discreditable  for  a  scavenger  to  be  dirty 
than  for  a  deep-sea  diver  to  be  wet.  A  sweep 
is  no  more  disgraced  when  he  is  covered  with 
soot  than  Michael  Angelo  when  he  is  covered 
with  clay,  or  Bayard  when  he  is  covered  with 
blood.  Nor  have  these  extenders  of  the  public-- 
school tradition  done  or  suggested  anything  by 
way  of  a  substitute  for  the  present  snobbish 
system  which  makes  cleanliness  almost  impos- 
sible to  the  poor ;  I  mean  the  general  ritual  of 
linen  and  the  wearing  of  the  cast-off  clothes  of 
the  rich.  One  man  moves  into  another  man's 
306 


NEW     SCHOOLS 

clothes  as  he  moves  into  another  man's  house. 
No  wonder  that  our  educationists  are  not  hor- 
rified at  a  man  picking  up  the  aristocrat's 
second-hand  trousers,  when  they  themselves 
have  only  taken  up  the  aristocrat's  second- 
hand ideas. 


307 


XIII 

THE    OUTLAWED    PARENT 

THERE  is  one  thing  at  least  of  which  there  is 
never  so  much  as  a  whisper  inside  the  popular 
schools ;  and  that  is  the  opinion  of  the  people. 
The  only  persons  who  seem  to  have  nothing  to 
do  with  the  education  of  the  children  are  the 
parents.  Yet  the  English  poor  have  very  definite 
traditions  in  many  ways.  They  are  hidden 
under  embarrassment  and  irony ;  and  those  psy- 
chologists who  have  disentangled  them  talk  of 
them  as  very  strange,  barbaric  and  secretive 
things.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  traditions 
of  the  poor  are  mostly  simply  the  traditions  of 
humanity,  a  thing  which  many  of  us  have  not 
seen  for  some  time.  For  instance,  workingmen 
have  a  tradition  that  if  one  is  talking  about  a 
vile  thing  it  is  better  to  talk  of  it  in  coarse 
language;  one  is  the  less  likely  to  be  seduced 
into  excusing  it.  But  mankind  had  this  tradi- 
308 


THE     OUTLAWED     PARENT 

tion  also,  until  the  Puritans  and  their  children, 
the  Ibsenites,  started  the  opposite  idea,  that  it 
does  not  matter  what  you  say  so  long  as  you 
say  it  with  long  words  and  a  long  face.  Or 
again,  the  educated  classes  have  tabooed  most 
jesting  about  personal  appearance;  but  in  do- 
ing this  they  taboo  not  only  the  humor  of  the 
slums,  but  more  than  half  the  healthy  liter- 
ature of  the  world ;  they  put  polite  nose-bags  on 
the  noses  of  Punch  and  Bardolph,  Stiggins  and 
Cyrano  de  Bergerac.  Again,  the  educated 
classes  have  adopted  a  hideous  and  heathen  cus- 
tom of  considering  death  as  too  dreadful  to  talk 
about,  and  letting  it  remain  a  secret  for  each 
person,  like  some  private  malformation.  The 
poor,  on  the  contrary,  make  a  great  gossip  and 
display  about  bereavement ;  and  they  are  right. 
They  have  hold  of  a  truth  of  psychology  which 
is  at  the  back  of  all  the  funeral  customs  of  the 
children  of  men.  The  way  to  lessen  sorrow  is 
to  make  a  lot  of  it.  The  way  to  endure  a  pain- 
ful crisis  is  to  insist  very  much  that  it  is  a 
crisis;  to  permit  people  who  must  feel  sad  at 
309 


THE     OUTLAWED    PARENT 

least  to  feel  important.  In  this  the  poor  are 
simply  the  priests  of  the  universal  civilization ; 
and  in  their  stuffy  feasts  and  solemn  chattering 
there  is  the  smell  of  the  baked  meats  of  Hamlet 
and  the  dust  and  echo  of  the  funeral  games  of 
Patroclus. 

The  things  philanthropists  barely  excuse  (or 
do  not  excuse)  in  the  life  of  the  laboring  classes 
are  simply  the  things  we  have  to  excuse  in  all 
the  greatest  monuments  of  man.  It  may  be 
that  the  laborer  is  as  gross  as  Shakespeare  or 
as  garrulous  as  Homer ;  that  if  he  is  religious 
he  talks  nearly  as  much  about  hell  as  Dante; 
that  if  he  is  worldly  he  talks  nearly  as  much 
about  drink  as  Dickens.  Nor  is  the  poor  man 
without  historic  support  if  he  thinks  less  of 
that  ceremonial  washing  which  Christ  dismissed, 
and  rather  more  of  that  ceremonial  drinking 
which  Christ  specially  sanctified.  The  only 
difference  between  the  poor  man  of  to-day  and 
the  saints  and  heroes  of  history  is  that  which 
in  all  classes  separates  the  common  man  who 
can  feel  things  from  the  great  man  who  can 
310 


THE     OUTLAWED     PARENT 

express  them.  What  he  feels  is  merely  the  her- 
itage of  man.  Now  nobody  expects  of  course 
that  the  cabmen  and  coal-heavers  can  be  com- 
plete instructors  of  their  children  any  more 
than  the  squires  and  colonels  and  tea  merchants 
are  complete  instructors  of  their  children. 
There  must  be  an  educational  specialist  in  loco 
parentis.  But  the  master  at  Harrow  is  in  loco 
parentis;  the  master  in  Hoxton  is  rather  contra 
parentum.  The  vague  politics  of  the  squire, 
the  vaguer  virtues  of  the  colonel,  the  soul  and 
spiritual  yearnings  of  a  tea  merchant,  are,  in 
veritable  practice,  conveyed  to  the  children  of 
these  people  at  the  English  public  schools.  But 
I  wish  here  to  ask  a  very  plain  and  emphatic 
question.  Can  anyone  alive  even  pretend  to 
point  out  any  way  in  which  these  special  vir- 
tues and  traditions  of  the  poor  are  reproduced 
in  the  education  of  the  poor?  I  do  not  wish 
the  costers'  irony  to  appear  as  coarsely  in  the 
school  as  it  does  in  the  taproom;  but  does  it 
appear  at  all?  Is  the  child  taught  to  sympa- 
thize at  all  with  his  father's  admirable  cheer- 
311 


THE     OUTLAWED     PARENT 

fulness  and  slang?  I  do  not  expect  the  pa- 
thetic, eager  pietas  of  the  mother,  with  her  fu- 
neral clothes  and  funeral  baked  meats,  to  be 
exactly  imitated  in  the  educational  system ;  but 
has  it  any  influence  at  all  on  the  educational 
system?  Does  any  elementary  schoolmaster  ac- 
cord it  even  an  instant's  consideration  or  re- 
spect? I  do  not  expect  the  schoolmaster  to 
hate  hospitals  and  C.O.S.  centers  so  much  as 
the  schoolboy's  father;  but  does  he  hate  them 
at  all?  Does  he  sympathize  in  the  least  with 
the  poor  man's  point  of  honor  against  official 
institutions?  Is  it  not  quite  certain  that  the 
ordinary  elementary  schoolmaster  will  think  it 
not  merely  natural  but  simply  conscientious  to 
eradicate  all  these  rugged  legends  of  a  labori- 
ous people,  and  on  principle  to  preach  soap  and 
Socialism  against  beer  and  liberty?  In  the 
lower  classes  the  schoolmaster  does  not  work 
for  the  parent,  but  against  the  parent.  Modern 
education  means  handing  down  the  customs  of 
the  minority,  and  rooting  out  the  customs  of 
the  majority.  Instead  of  their  Christlike  char- 


THE     OUTLAWED     PARENT 

ity,  their  Shakespearean  laughter  and  their 
high  Homeric  reverence  for  the  dead,  the  poor 
have  imposed  on  them  mere  pedantic  copies  of 
the  prejudices  of  the  remote  rich.  They  must 
think  a  bathroom  a  necessity  because  to  the 
lucky  it  is  a  luxury ;  they  must  swing  Swedish 
clubs  because  their  masters  are  afraid  of  Eng- 
lish cudgels ;  and  they  must  get  over  their  prej- 
udice against  being  fed  by  the  parish,  because 
aristocrats  feel  no  shame  about  being  fed  by 
the  nation. 


313 


XIV 

FOLLY     AND     FEMALE     EDUCATION 

IT  is  the  same  in  the  case  of  girls.  I  am  often 
solemnly  asked  what  I  think  of  the  new  ideas 
about  female  education.  But  there  are  no  new 
ideas  about  female  education.  There  is  not, 
there  never  has  been,  even  the  vestige  of  a  new 
idea.  All  the  educational  reformers  did  was  to 
ask  what  was  being  done  to  boys  and  then  go 
and  do  it  to  girls ;  just  as  they  asked  what  was 
being  taught  to  young  squires  and  then  taught 
it  to  young  chimney-sweeps.  What  they  call 
new  ideas  are  very  old  ideas  in  the  wrong  place. 
Boys  play  football,  why  shouldn't  girls  play 
football ;  boys  have  school-colors,  why  shouldn't 
girls  have  school-colors ;  boys  go  in  hundreds 
to  day-schools,  why  shouldn't  girls  go  in  hun- 
dreds to  day-schools ;  boys  go  to  Oxford,  why 
shouldn't  girls  go  to  Oxford — in  short,  boys 
grow  mustaches,  why  shouldn't  girls  grow  musj 


FEMALE     EDUCATION 

taches — that  is  about  their  notion  of  a  new 
idea.  There  is  no  brain-work  in  the  thing  at 
all;  no  root  query  of  what  sex  is,  of  whether 
it  alters  this  or  that,  and  why,  any  more  than 
there  is  any  imaginative  grip  of  the  humor  and 
heart  of  the  populace  in  the  popular  education. 
There  is  nothing  but  plodding,  elaborate,  ele- 
phantine imitation.  And  just  as  in  the  case  of 
elementary  teaching,  the  cases  are  of  a  cold  and 
reckless  inappropriateness.  Even  a  savage 
could  see  that  bodily  things,  at  least,  which  are 
good  for  a  man  are  very  likely  to  be  bad  for  a 
woman.  Yet  there  is  no  boy's  game,  however 
brutal,  which  these  mild  lunatics  have  not  pro- 
moted among  girls.  To  take  a  stronger  case, 
they  give  girls  very  heavy  home-work;  never 
reflecting  that  all  girls  have  home-work  already 
in  their  homes.  It  is  all  a  part  of  the  same  silly 
subjugation;  there  must  be  a  hard  stick-up 
collar  round  the  neck  of  a  woman,  because  it  is 
already  a  nuisance  round  the  neck  of  a  man. 
Though  a  Saxon,  serf  if  he  wore  that  collar  of 

O  7 

cardboard,  would  ask  for  his  collar  of  brass. 
315 


FEMALE     EDUCATION 

It  will  then  be  answered,  not  without  a  sneer, 
'*  And  what  would  you  prefer?  Would  you  go 
back  to  the  elegant  early  Victorian  female,  with 
ringlets  and  smelling-bottle,  doing  a  little  in 
water-colors,  dabbling  a  little  in  Italian,  play- 
ing a  little  on  the  harp,  writing  in  vulgar  al- 
bums and  painting  on  senseless  screens?  Do 
you  prefer  that?  "  To  which  I  answer,  "  Em- 
phatically, yes."  I  solidly  prefer  it  to  the  new 
female  education,  for  this  reason,  that  I  can 
see  in  it  an  intellectual  design,  while  there  is 
none  in  the  other.  I  am  by  no  means  sure  that 
even  in  point  of  practical  fact  that  elegant 
female  would  not  have  been  more  than  a  match 
for  most  of  the  inelegant  females.  I  fancy  Jane 
Austen  was  stronger,  sharper  and  shrewder 
than  Charlotte  Bronte;  I  am  quite  certain  she 
was  stronger,  sharper  and  shrewder  than 
George  Eliot.  She  could  do  one  thing  neither 
of  them  could  do :  she  could  coolly  and  sensibly 
describe  a  man.  I  am  not  sure  that  the  old 
great  lady  who  could  only  smatter  Italian  was 
not  more  vigorous  than  the  new  great  lady  who 
316 


FEMALE     EDUCATION 

can  only  stammer  American ;  nor  am  I  certain 
that  the  bygone  duchesses  who  were  scarcely 
successful  when  they  painted  Melrose  Abbey, 
were  so  much  more  weak-minded  than  the  mod- 
ern duchesses  who  paint  only  their  own  faces, 
and  are  bad  at  that.  But  that  is  not  the  point. 
What  was  the  theory,  what  was  the  idea,  in 
their  old,  weak  water-colors  and  their  shaky 
Italian?  The  idea  was  the  same  which  in  a 
ruder  rank  expressed  itself  in  home-made  wines 
and  hereditary  recipes ;  and  which  still,  in  a 
thousand  unexpected  ways,  can  be  found  cling- 
ing to  the  women  of  the  poor.  It  was  the  idea 
I  urged  in  the  second  part  of  this  book:  that 
the  world  must  keep  one  great  amateur,  lest  we 
all  become  artists  and  perish.  Somebody  must 
renounce  all  specialist  conquests,  that  she  may 
conquer  all  the  conquerors.  That  she  may  be 
a  queen  of  life,  she  must  not  be  a  private  sol- 
dier in  it.  I  do  not  think  the  elegant  female 
with  her  bad  Italian  was  a  perfect  product,  any 
more  than  I  think  the  slum  woman  talking  gin 
and  funerals  is  a  perfect  product ;  alas !  there 
317 


FEMALE     EDUCATION 

are  few  perfect  products.  But  they  come  from 
a  comprehensible  idea ;  and  the  new  woman 
comes  from  nothing  and  nowhere.  It  is  right 
to  have  an  ideal,  it  is  right  to  have  the  right 
ideal,  and  these  two  have  the  right  ideal.  The 
slum  mother  with  her  funerals  is  the  degenerate 
daughter  of  Antigone,  the  obstinate  priestess 
of  the  household  gods.  The  lady  talking  bad 
Italian  was  the  decayed  tenth  cousin  of  Portia, 
the  great  and  golden  Italian  lady,  the  Renas- 
cence amateur  of  life,  who  could  be  a  barrister 
because  she  could  be  anything.  Sunken  and 
neglected  in  the  sea  of  modern  monotony  and 
imitation,  the  types  hold  tightly  to  their  orig- 
inal truths.  Antigone,  ugly,  dirty  and  often 
drunken,  will  still  bury  her  father.  The  elegant 
female,  vapid  and  fading  away  to  nothing,  still 
feels  faintly  the  fundamental  difference  between 
herself  and  her  husband :  that  he  must  be  Some- 
thing in  the  City,  that  she  may  be  everything 
in  the  country. 

There  was  a  time  when  you  and  I  and  all  of 
us  were  all  very  close  to  God;  so  that  even 
318 


FEMALE     EDUCATION 

now  the  color  of  a  pebble  (or  a  paint),  the 
smell  of  a  flower  (or  a  firework),  comes  to  our 
hearts  with  a  kind  of  authority  and  certainty ; 
as  if  they  were  fragments  of  a  muddled  mes- 
sage, or  features  of  a  forgotten  face.  To  pour 
that  fiery  simplicity  upon  the  whole  of  life  is 
the  only  real  aim  of  education ;  and  closest  to 
the  child  comes  the  woman — she  understands. 
To  say  what  she  understands  is  beyond  me; 
save  only  this,  that  it  is  not  a  solemnity. 
Rather  it  is  a  towering  levity,  an  uproarious 
amateurishness  of  the  universe,  such  as  we  felt 
when  we  were  little,  and  would  as  soon  sing 
as  garden,  as  soon  paint  as  run.  To  smatter 
the  tongues  of  men  and  angels,  to  dabble  in 
the  dreadful  sciences,  to  juggle  with  pillars 
and  pyramids  and  toss  up  the  planets  like  balls, 
this  is  that  inner  audacity  and  indifference 
which  the  human  soul,  like  a  conjurer  catching 
oranges,  must  keep  up  forever.  This  is  that 
insanely  frivolous  thing  we  call  sanity.  And 
the  elegant  female,  drooping  her  ringlets  over 
her  water-colors,  knew  it  and  acted  on  it.  She 
319 


FEMALE     EDUCATION 

was  juggling  with  frantic  and  flaming  suns. 
She  was  maintaining  the  bold  equilibrium  of 
inferiorities  which  is  the  most  mysterious  of 
superiorities  and  perhaps  the  most  unattain- 
able. She  was  maintaining  the  prime  truth  of 
woman,  the  universal  mother:  that  if  a  thing 
is  worth  doing,  it  is  worth  doing  badly. 


320 


PART   V 
THE    HOME    OF   MAN 


THE      EMPIRE      OF      THE      INSECT 

A  CULTIVATED  Conservative  friend  of  mine  once 
exhibited  great  distress  because  in  a  gay  mo- 
ment I  once  called  Edmund  Burke  an  atheist. 
I  need  scarcely  say  that  the  remark  lacked 
something  of  biographical  precision ;  it  was 
meant  to.  Burke  was  certainly  not  an  atheist 
in  his  conscious  cosmic  theory,  though  he  had 
not  a  special  and  flaming  faith  in  God,  like 
Robespierre.  Nevertheless,  the  remark  had 
reference  to  a  truth  which  it  is  here  relevant  to 
repeat.  I  mean  that  in  the  quarrel  over  the 
French  Revolution,  Burke  did  stand  for  the 
atheistic  attitude  and  mode  of  argument,  as 
Robespierre  stood  for  the  theistic.  The  Revo- 
lution appealed  to  the  idea  of  an  abstract  and 
eternal  justice,  beyond  all  local  custom  or  con- 
venience. If  there  are  commands  of  God,  then 
there  must  be  rights  of  man.  Here  Burke  made 
323 


EMPIRE     OF    THE     INSECT 

his  brilliant  -diversion;  he  did  not  attack  the 
Robespierre  doctrine  with  the  old  mediaeval 
doctrine  of  jus  divinum  (which,  like  the  Robes- 
pierre doctrine,  was  theistic),  he  attacked  it 
with  the  modern  argument  of  scientific  rela- 
tivity; in  short,  the  argument  of  evolution. 
He  suggested  that  humanity  was  everywhere 
molded  by  or  fitted  to  its  environment  and  in- 
stitutions ;  in  fact,  that  each  people  practically 
got,  not  only  the  tyrant  it  deserved,  but  the 
tyrant  it  ought  to  have.  "  I  know  nothing  of 
the  rights  of  men,"  he  said,  "  but  I  know  some- 
thing of  the  rights  of  Englishmen."  There 
you  have  the  essential  atheist.  His  argument 
is  that  we  have  got  some  protection  by  natural 
accident  and  growth ;  and  why  should  we  pro- 
fess to  think  beyond  it,  for  all  the  world  as  if 
we  were  the  images  of  God !  We  are  born  under 
a  House  of  Lords,  as  birds  under  a  house  of 
leaves ;  we  live  under  a  monarchy  as  niggers 
live  under  a  tropic  sun ;  it  is  not  their  fault 
if  they  are  slaves,  and  it  is  not  ours  if  we  are 
snobs.  Thus,  long  before  Darwin  struck  his 
324 


EMPIRE     OF     THE     INSECT 

great  blow  at  democracy,  the  essential  of  the 
Darwinian  argument  had  been  already  urged 
against  the  French  Revolution.  Man,  said 
Burke  in  effect,  must  adapt  himself  to  every- 
thing, like  an  animal;  he  must  not  try  to  alter 
everything,  like  an  angel.  The  last  weak  cry 
of  the  pious,  pretty,  half-artificial  optimism  and 
deism  of  the  eighteenth  century  came  in  the 
voice  of  Sterne,  saying,  **  God  tempers  the  wind 
to  the  shorn  lamb."  And  Burke,  the  iron  evo- 
lutionist, essentially  answered,  "  No ;  God  tem- 
pers the  shorn  lamb  to  the  wind."  It  is  the 
lamb  that  has  to  adapt  himself.  That  is,  he 
either  dies  or  becomes  a  particular  kind  of  lamb 
who  likes  standing  in  a  draught. 

The  subconscious  popular  instinct  against 
Darwinism  was  not  a  mere  offense  at  the  gro- 
tesque notion  of  visiting  one's  grandfather  in 
a  cage  in  the  Regent's  Park.  Men  go  in  for 
drink,  practical  jokes  and  many  other  gro- 
tesque things ;  they  do  not  much  mind  making 
beasts  of  themselves,  and  would  not  much  mind 
having  beasts  made  of  their  forefathers.  The 
325 


EMPIRE    OF    THE    INSECT 

real  instinct  was  much  deeper  and  much  more 
valuable.  It  was  this:  that  when  once  one 
begins  to  think  of  man  as  a  shifting  and  alter- 
able thing,  it  is  always  easy  for  the  strong 
and  crafty  to  twist  him  into  new  shapes  for  all 
kinds  of  unnatural  purposes.  The  popular  in- 
stinct sees  in  such  developments  the  possibility 
of  backs  bowed  and  hunch-backed  for  their  bur- 
den, or  limbs  twisted  for  their  task.  It  has  a 
very  well-grounded  guess  that  whatever  is  done 
swiftly  and  systematically  will  mostly  be  done 
by  a  successful  class  and  almost  solely  in  their 
interests.  It  has  therefore  a  vision  of  inhuman 
hybrids  and  half-human  experiments  much  in 
the  style  of  Mr.  Wells's  "  Island  of  Dr.  Mo- 
reau."  The  rich  man  may  come  to  breeding  a 
tribe  of  dwarfs  to  be  his  jockeys,  and  a  tribe 
of  giants  to  be  his  hall-porters.  Grooms  might 
be  born  bow-legged  and  tailors  born  cross- 
legged  ;  perfumers  might  have  long,  large  noses 
and  a  crouching  attitude,  like  hounds  of  scent ; 
and  professional  wine-tasters  might  have  the 
horrible  expression  of  one  tasting  wine  stamped 
326 


EMPIRE    OF    THE    INSECT 

upon  their  faces  as  infants.  Whatever  wild 
image  one  employs  it  cannot  keep  pace  with 
the  panic  of  the  human  fancy,  when  once  it 
supposes  that  the  fixed  type  called  man  could 
be  changed.  If  some  millionaire  wanted  arms, 
some  porter  must  grow  ten  arms  like  an  octo- 
pus ;  if  he  wants  legs,  some  messenger-boy  must 
go  with  a  hundred  trotting  legs  like  a  centi- 
pede. In  the  distorted  mirror  of  hypothesis, 
that  is,  of  the  unknown,  men  can  dimly  see 
such  monstrous  and  evil  shapes ;  men  run  all  to 
eye,  or  all  to  fingers,  with  nothing  left  but  one 
nostril  or  one  ear.  That  is  the  nightmare  with 
which  the  mere  notion  of  adaptation  threatens 
us.  That  is  the  nightmare  that  is  not  so  very 
far  from  the  reality. 

It  will  be  said  that  not  the  wildest  evolution- 
ist really  asks  that  we  should  become  in  any 
way  unhuman  or  copy  any  other  animal.  Par- 
don me,  that  is  exactly  what  not  merely  the  wild- 
est evolutionists  urge,  but  some  of  the  tamest 
evolutionists,  too.  There  has  risen  high  in  recent 
history  an  important  cultus  which  bids  fair  to 
327 


EMPIRE    OF    THE    INSECT 

be  the  religion  of  the  future — which  means  the 
religion  of  those  few  weak-minded  people  who 
live  in  the  future.  It  is  typical  of  our  time  that 
it  has  to  look  for  its  god  through  a  microscope ; 
and  our  time  has  marked  a  definite  adoration  of 
the  insect.  Like  most  things  we  call  new,  of 
course,  it  is  not  at  all  new  as  an  idea;  it  is 
only  new  as  an  idolatry.  Virgil  takes  bees  se- 
riously, but  I  doubt  if  he  would  have  kept  bees 
as  carefully  as  he  wrote  about  them.  The  wise 
king  told  the  sluggard  to  watch  the  ant,  a 
charming  occupation — for  a  sluggard.  But  in 
our  own  time  has  appeared  a  very  different 
tone,  and  more  than  one  great  man,  as  well  as 
numberless  intelligent  men,  have  in  our  time 
seriously  suggested  that  we  should  study  the  in- 
sect because  we  are  his  inferiors.  The  old  mor- 
alists merely  took  the  virtues  of  man  and  dis- 
tributed them  quite  decoratively  and  arbitrarily 
among  the  animals.  The  ant  was  an  almost 
heraldic  symbol  of  industry,  as  the  lion  was  of 
courage,  or,  for  the  matter  of  that,  the  pelican 
of  charity.  But  if  the  mediaevals  had  been  con- 
328 


EMPIRE    OF    THE    INSECT 

vinced  that  a  lion  was  not  courageous,  they 
would  have  dropped  the  lion  and  kept  the  cour- 
age ;  if  the  pelican  is  not  charitable,  they  would 
say,  so  much  the  worse  for  the  pelican.  The 
old  moralists,  I  say,  permitted  the  ant  to  en- 
force and  typify  man's  morality;  they  never, 
allowed  the  ant  to  upset  it.  They  used  the  ant 
for  industry  as  the  lark  for  punctuality;  they 
looked  up  at  the  flapping  birds  and  down  at 
the  crawling  insects  for  a  homely  lesson.  But 
we  have  lived  to  see  a  sect  that  does  not  look 
down  at  the  insects,  but  looks  up  at  the  insects ; 
that  asks  us  essentially  to  bow  down  and  wor- 
ship beetles,  like  the  ancient  Egyptians. 

Maurice  Maeterlinck  is  a  man  of  unmistak- 
able genius,  and  genius  always  carries  a  mag- 
nifying glass.  In  the  terrible  crystal  of  his 
lens  we  have  seen  the  bees  not  as  a  little  yellow 
swarm,  but  rather  in  golden  armies  and  hier- 
archies of  warriors  and  queens.  Imagination 
perpetually  peers  and  creeps  further  down  the 
avenues  and  vistas  in  the  tubes  of  science,  and 
one  fancies  every  frantic  reversal  of  propor- 
329 


EMPIRE     OF     THE     INSECT 

tions ;  the  earwig  striding  across  the  echoing 
plain  like  an  elephant,  or  the  grasshopper  com- 
ing roaring  above  our  roofs  like  a  vast  aero- 
plane, as  he  leaps  from  Hertfordshire  to  Sur- 
rey. One  seems  to  enter  in  a  dream  a  temple 
of  enormous  entomology,  whose  architecture  is 
based  on  something  wilder  than  arms  or  back^. 
bones;  in  which  the  ribbed  columns  have  the 
half-crawling  look  of  dim  and  monstrous  cater- 
pillars; or  the  dome  is  a  starry  spider  hung 
horribly  in  the  void.  There  is  one  of  the  mod- 
ern works  of  engineering  that  gives  one  some- 
thing of  this  nameless  fear  of  the  exaggera- 
tions of  an  underworld ;  and  that  is  the  curious 
curved  architecture  of  the  underground  railway, 
commonly  called  the  Twopenny  Tube.  Those 
squat  archways,  without  any  upright  line  or 
pillar,  look  as  if  they  had  been  tunneled  by 
huge  worms  who  have  never  learned  to  lift  their 
heads.  It  is  the  very  underground  palace  of 
the  Serpent,  the  spirit  of  changing  shape  and 
color,  that  is  the  enemy  of  man. 
330 


EMPIRE     OF    THE     INSECT 

But  it  is  not  merely  by  such  strange  aesthetic 
suggestions  that  writers  like  Maeterlinck  have 
influenced  us  in  the  matter;  there  is  also  an 
ethical  side  to  the  business.  The  upshot  of 
M.  Maeterlinck's  book  on  bees  is  an  admiration, 
one  might  also  say  an  envy,  of  their  collective 
spirituality;  of  the  fact  that  they  live  only 
for  something  which  he  calls  the  Soul  of  the 
Hive.  And  this  admiration  for  the  communal 
morality  of  insects  is  expressed  in  many  other 
modern  writers  in  various  quarters  and  shapes ; 
in  Mr.  Benjamin  Kidd's  theory  of  living  only 
for  the  evolutionary  future  of  our  race,  and  in 
the  great  interest  of  some  Socialists  in  ants, 
which  they  generally  prefer  to  bees,  I  suppose, 
because  they  are  not  so  brightly  colored.  Not 
least  among  the  hundred  evidences  of  this  vague 
insectolatry  are  the  floods  of  flattery  poured  by 
modern  people  on  that  energetic  nation  of  the 
Far  East  of  which  it  has  been  said  that  "  Pa- 
triotism is  its  only  religion " ;  or,  in  other 
words,  that  it  lives  only  for  the  Soul  of  the 
331 


EMPIRE     OF    THE     INSECT 

Hive.  When  at  long  intervals  of  the  centuries 
Christendom  grows  weak,  morbid  or  skeptical, 
and  mysterious  Asia  begins  to  move  against  us 
her  dim  populations  and  to  pour  them  westward 
like  a  dark  movement  of  matter,  in  such  cases 
it  has  been  very  common  to  compare  the  inva- 
sion to  a  plague  of  lice  or  incessant  armies  of 
locusts.  The  Eastern  armies  were  indeed  like 
insects ;  in  their  blind,  busy  destructiveness,  in 
their  black  nihilism  of  personal  outlook,  in  their 
hateful  indifference  to  individual  life  and  love, 
in  their  base  belief  in  mere  numbers,  in  their 
pessimistic  courage  and  their  atheistic  patriot- 
ism, the  riders  and  raiders  of  the  East  are  in- 
deed like  all  the  creeping  things  of  the  earth. 
But  never  before,  I  think,  have  Christians  called 
a  Turk  a  locust  and  meant  it  as  a  compliment. 
Now  for  the  first  time  we  worship  as  well  as 
fear;  and  trace  with  adoration  that  enormous 
form  advancing  vast  and  vague  out  of  Asia, 
faintly  discernible  amid  the  mystic  clouds  of 
winged  creatures  hung  over  the  wasted  lands, 
thronging  the  skies  like  thunder  and  discolor- 
332 


EMPIRE    OF    THE    INSECT 

ing  the  skies  like  rain ;  Beelzebub,  the  Lord  of 

Flies. 

In  resisting  this  horrible  theory  of  the  Soul 
of  the  Hive,  we  of  Christendom  stand  not  for 
ourselves,  but  for  all  humanity;  for  the  essen- 
tial and  distinctive  human  idea  that  one  good 
and  happy  man  is  an  end  in  himself,  that  a  soul 
is  worth  saving.  Nay,  for  those  who  like  such 
biological  fancies  it  might  well  be  said  that  we 
stand  as  chiefs  and  champions  of  a  whole  sec- 
tion of  nature,  princes  of.  the  house  whose  cog- 
nizance is  the  backbone,  standing  for  the  milk 
of  the  individual  mother  and  the  courage  of 
the  wandering  cub,  representing  the  pathetic 
chivalry  of  the  dog,  the  humor  and  perversity 
of  cats,  the  affection  of  the  tranquil  horse,  the 
loneliness  of  the  lion.  It  is  more  to  the  point, 
however,  to  urge  that  this  mere  glorification  of 
society  as  it  is  in  the  social  insects  is  a  trans- 
formation and  a  dissolution  in  one  of  the  out- 
lines which  have  been  specially  the  symbols  of 
man.  In  the  cloud  and  confusion  of  the  flies 
and  bees  is  growing  fainter  and  fainter,  as  if 
333 


EMPIRE    OF    THE    INSECT 

finally  disappearing,  the  idea  of  the  human 
family.  The  hive  has  become  larger  than  the 
house,  the  bees  are  destroying  their  captors; 
what  the  locust  hath  left,  the  caterpillar  hath 
eaten;  and  the  little  house  and  garden  of  our 
friend  Jones  is  in  a  bad  way. 


334. 


n 

THE    FALLACY    OF    THE    UMBRELLA 
STAND 

WHEN  Lord  Morley  said  that  the  House  of 
Lords  must  be  either  mended  or  ended,  he  used 
a  phrase  which  has  caused  some  confusion ;  be- 
cause it  might  seem  to  suggest  that  mending 
and  ending  are  somewhat  similar  things.  I 
wish  specially  to  insist  on  the  fact  that  mend- 
ing and  ending  are  opposite  things.  You  mend 
a  thing  because  you  like  it;  you  end  a  thing 
because  you  don't.  To  mend  is  to  strengthen. 
I,  for  instance,  disbelieve  in  oligarchy;  so  I 
would  no  more  mend  the  House  of  Lords  than 
I  would  mend  a  thumbscrew.  On  the  other 
hand,  I  do  believe  in  the  family;  therefore  I 
would  mend  the  family  as  I  would  mend  a  chair ; 
and  I  will  never  deny  for  a  moment  that  the 
modern  family  is  a  chair  that  wants  mending. 
But  here  comes  in  the  essential  point  about  the 
335 


THE     UMBRELLA     STAND 

mass  of  modern  advanced  sociologists.  Here 
are  two  institutions  that  have  always  been  fun- 
damental with  mankind,  the  family  and  the 
state.  Anarchists,  I  believe,  disbelieve  in  both. 
It  is  quite  unfair  to  say  that  Socialists  believe 
in  the  state,  but  do  not  believe  in  the  family ; 
thousands  of  Socialists  believe  more  in  the  fam- 
ily than  any  Tory.  But  it  is  true  to  say  that 
while  anarchists  would  end  both,  Socialists  are 
specially  engaged  in  mending  (that  is,  strength- 
ening and  renewing)  the  state;  and  they  are 
not  specially  engaged  in  strengthening  and  re- 
newing the  family.  They  are  not  doing  any- 
thing to  define  the  functions  of  father,  mother, 
and  child,  as  such ;  they  are  not  tightening  the 
machine  up  again ;  they  are  not  blackening  in 
again  the  fading  lines  of  the  old  drawing.  With 
the  state  they  are  doing  this;  they  are  sharp- 
ening its  machinery,  they  are  blacking  in  iis 
black  dogmatic  lines,  they  are  making  mere 
government  in  every  way  stronger  and  in  some 
ways  harsher  than  before.  While  they  leave 
the  home  in  ruins,  they  restore  the  hive,  espe- 
336 


THE     UMBRELLA     STAND 

cially  the  stings.  Indeed,  some  schemes  of 
labor  and  Poor  Law  reform  recently  advanced 
by  distinguished  Socialists,  amount  to  little 
more  than  putting  the  largest  number  of  peo- 
ple in  the  despotic  power  of  Mr.  Bumble.  Ap- 
parently, progress  means  being  moved  on — by 
the  police. 

The  point  it  is  my  purpose  to  urge  might 
perhaps  be  suggested  thus :  that  Socialists  and 
most  social  reformers  of  their  color  are  vividly 
conscious  of  the  line  between  the  kind  of  things 
that  belong  to  the  state  and  the  kind  of  things 
that  belong  to  mere  chaos  or  uncoercible  na- 
ture ;  they  may  force  children  to  go  to  school 
before  the  sun  rises,  but  they  will  not  try  to 
force  the  sun  to  rise ;  they  will  not,  like  Canute, 
banish  the  sea,  but  only  the  sea-bathers.  But 
inside  the  outline  of  the  state  their  lines  are 
confused,  and  entities  melt  into  each  other. 
They  have  no  firm  instinctive  sense  of  one  thing 
being  in  its  nature  private  and  another  public, 
of  one  thing  being  necessarily  bond  and  an- 
other free.  That  is  why  piece  by  piece,  and 
337 


THE     UMBRELLA     STAND 

quite  silently,  personal  liberty  is  being  stolen 
from  Englishmen,  as  personal  land  has  been 
silently  stolen  ever  since  the  sixteenth  century. 
I  can  only  put  it  sufficiently  curtly  in  a  care- 
less simile.  A  Socialist  means  a  man  who  thinks 
a  walking-stick  like  an  umbrella  because  they 
both  go  into  the  umbrella-stand.  Yet  they  are 
as  different  as  a  battle-ax  and  a  bootjack.  The 
essential  idea  of  an  umbrella  is  breadth  and 
protection.  The  essential  idea  of  a  stick  is 
slenderness  and,  partly,  attack.  The  stick  is 
the  sword,  the  umbrella  is  the  shield,  but  it  is 
a  shield  against  another  and  more  nameless 
enemy — the  hostile  but  anonymous  universe. 
More  properly,  therefore,  the  umbrella  is  the 
roof;  it  is  a  kind  of  collapsible  house.  Bat  the 
vital  difference  goes  far  deeper  than  this ;  it 
branches  off  into  two  kingdoms  of  man's  mind, 
with  a  chasm  between.  For  the  point  is  this : 
that  the  umbrella  is  a  shield  against  an  enemy 
so  actual  as  to  be  a  mere  nuisance ;  whereas  the 
stick  is  a  sword  against  enemies  so  entirely  im- 
aginary as  to  be  a  pure  pleasure.  The  stick  is 
338 


THE    UMBRELLA     STAND 

not  merely  a  sword,  but  a  court  sword;  it  is 
a  thing  of  purely  ceremonial  swagger.  One 
cannot  express  the  emotion  in  any  way  except 
by  saying  that  a  man  feels  more  like  a  man 
with  a  stick  in  his  hand,  just  as  he  feels  more 
like  a  man  with  a  sword  at  his  side.  But  no- 
body ever  had  any  swelling  sentiments  about  an 
umbrella;  it  is  a  convenience,  like  a  door- 
scraper.  An  umbrella  is  a  necessary  evil.  A 
walking-stick  is  a  quite  unnecessary  good. 
This,  I  fancy,  is  the  real  explanation  of  the 
perpetual  losing  of  umbrellas;  one  does  not 
hear  of  people  losing  walking-sticks.  For  a 
walking-stick  is  a  pleasure,  a  piece  of  real  per- 
sonal property ;  it  is  missed  even  when  it  is  not 
needed.  When  my  right  hand  forgets  its  stick 
may  it  forget  its  cunning.  But  anybody  may 
forget  an  umbrella,  as  anybody  might  forget  a 
shed  that  he  had  stood  up  in  out  of  the  rain. 
Anybody  can  forget  a  necessary  thing. 

If  I  might  pursue  the  figure  of  speech,  I  might 
briefly   say   that   the  whole   Collectivist    error 
consists  in  saying  that  because  two  men  can 
339 


THE     UMBRELLA     STAND 

share  an  umbrella,  therefore  two  men  can  share 
a  walking-stick.  Umbrellas  might  possibly  be 
replaced  by  some  kind  of  common  awnings  cov- 
ering certain  streets  from  particular  showers. 
But  there  is  nothing  but  nonsense  in  the  notion 
of  swinging  a  communal  stick;  it  is  as  if  one 
spoke  of  twirling  a  communal  mustache.  It 
will  be  said  that  this  is  a  frank  fantasia  and 
that  no  sociologists  suggest  such  follies.  Par- 
don me,  they  do.  I  will  give  a  precise  parallel 
to  the  case  of  the  confusion  of  sticks  and  um- 
brellas, a  parallel  from  a  perpetually  reiterated 
suggestion  of  reform.  At  least  sixty  Socialists 
out  of  a  hundred,  when  they  have  spoken  of 
common  laundries,  will  go  on  at  once  to  speak 
of  common  kitchens.  This  is  just  as  mechanical 
and  unintelligent  as  the  fanciful  case  I  have 
quoted.  Sticks  and  umbrellas  are  both  stiff 
rods  that  go  into  holes  in  a  stand  in  the  hall. 
Kitchens  and  washouses  are  both  large  rooms 
full  of  heat  and  damp  and  steam.  But  the  soul 
and  function  of  the  two  things  are  utterly  oppo- 
site. There  is  only  one  way  of  washing  a  shirt ; 
340 


T,HE     UMBRELLA     STAND 

that  is,  there  is  only  one  right  way.     There  is 
no  taste  and  fancy  in  tattered  shirts.     Nobody 
says,  "  Tompkins  likes  five  holes  in  his  shirt, 
but  I  must  say,   give  me  the  good   old  four 
holes."   Nobody  says,  "  This  washerwoman  rips 
up  the  left  leg  of  my  pyjamas;  now  if  there  is 
one  thing  I  insist  on  it  is  the  right  leg  ripped 
up."     The  ideal  washing  is  simply  to  send  a 
thing  back  washed.    But  it  is  by  no  means  true 
that  the  ideal  cooking  is  simply  to  send  a  thing 
back  cooked.   Cooking  is  an  art ;  it  has  in  it  per- 
sonality, and  even  perversity,  for  the  definition 
of  an  art  is  that  which  must  be  personal  and 
may  be  perverse.     I  know  a  man,  not  otherwise 
dainty,  who  cannot  touch  common  sausages  un- 
less they  are  almost  burned  to  a  coal.      He  wants 
his  sausages  fried  to  rags,  yet  he  does  not  in- 
sist on  his  shirts  being  boiled  to  rags.     I  do 
not  say  that  such  points  of  culinary  delicacy 
are  of  high  importance.     I  do  not  say  that  the 
communal  ideal  must  give  way  to  them.     What 
I  say  is  that  the  communal  ideal  is  not  con- 
scious  of  their  existence,   and   therefore  goes 
341 


THE    UMBRELLA     STAND 

wrong  from  the  very  start,  mixing  a  wholly 
public  thing  with  a  highly  individual  one.  Per- 
haps we  ought  to  accept  communal  kitchens  in 
the  social  crisis,  just  as  we  should  accept  com- 
munal cat's-meat  in  a  siege.  But  the  cultured 
Socialist,  quite  at  his  ease,  by  no  means  in  a 
siege,  talks  about  communal  kitchens  as  if  they 
were  the  same  kind  of  thing  as  communal  laun- 
dries. This  shows  at  the  start  that  he  misun- 
derstands human  nature.  It  is  as  different  as 
three  men  singing  the  same  chorus  from  three 
men  playing  three  tunes  on  the  same  piano. 


Ill 

THE  DREADFUL  DUTY  OF  GUDGE 

IN  the  quarrel  earlier  alluded  to  between  the 
energetic  Progressive  and  the  obstinate  Conser- 
vative (or,  to  talk  a  tenderer  language,  between 
Hudge  and  Gudge),  the  state  of  cross-purposes 
is  at  the  present  moment  acute.  The  Tory  says 
he  wants  to  preserve  family  life  in  Cindertown; 
the  Socialist  very  reasonably  points  out  to  him 
that  in  Cindertown  at  present  there  isn't  any 
family  life  to  preserve.  But  Hudge,  the  So- 
cialist, in  his  turn,  is  highly  vague  and  myste- 
rious about  whether  he  would  preserve  the  fam- 
ily life  if  there  were  any ;  or  whether  he  will  try 
to  restore  it  where  it  has  disappeared.  It  is  all 
very  confusing.  The  Tory  sometimes  talks  as 
if  he  wanted  to  tighten  the  domestic  bonds  that 
do  not  exist ;  the  Socialist  as  if  he  wanted  to 
loosen  the  bonds  that  do  not  bind  anybody. 
The  question  we  all  want  to  ask  of  both  of 
349 


DUTY     OF     GUDGE 

them  is  the  original  ideal  question,  "  Do  you 
want  to  keep  the  family  at  all?  "  If  Hudge, 
the  Socialist,  does  want  the  family  he  must  be 
prepared  for  the  natural  restraints,  distinctions 
and  divisions  of  labor  in  the  family.  He  must 
brace  himself  up  to  bear  the  idea  of  the  woman 
having  a  preference  for  the  private  house  and  a 
man  for  the  public  house.  He  must  manage 
to  endure  somehow  the  idea  of  a  woman  being 
womanly,  which  does  not  mean  soft  and  yield- 
ing, but  handy,  thrifty,  rather  hard,  and  very 
humorous.  He  must  confront  without  a  quiver 
the  notion  of  a  child  who  shall  be  childish,  that 
is,  full  of  energy,  but  without  an  idea  of  inde- 
pendence; fundamentally  as  eager  for  author- 
ity as  for  information  and  butter-scotch.  If  a 
man,  a  woman  and  a  child  live  together  any 
more  in  free  and  sovereign  households,  these 
ancient  relations  will  recur;  and  Hudge  must 
put  up  with  it.  He  can  only  avoid  it  by  de- 
stroying the  family,  driving  both  sexes  into 
sexless  hives  and  hordes,  and  bringing  up  all 
children  as  the  children  of  the  state — like  Oliver 


DUTY     OF     GUDGE 

Twist.  But  if  these  stern  words  must  be  ad- 
dressed to  Hudge,  neither  shall  Gudge  escape  a 
somewhat  severe  admonition.  For  thfe  plain 
truth  to  be  told  pretty  sharply  to  the  Tory 
is  this,  that  if  he  wants  the  family  to  remain, 
if  he  wants  to  be  strong  enough  to  resist  the 
rending  forces  of  our  essentially  savage  com- 
merce, he  must  make  some  very  big  sacrifices 
and  try  to  equalize  property.  The  overwhelm- 
ing mass  of  the  English  .people  at  this  partic- 
ular instant  are  simply  too  poor  to  be  domestic. 
They  are  as  domestic  as  they  can  manage ; 
they  are  much  more  domestic  than  the  govern- 
ing class ;  but  they  cannot  get  what  good  there 
was  originally  meant  to  be  in  this  institution, 
simply  because  they  have  not  got  enough 
money.  The  man  ought  to  stand  for  a  cer- 
tain magnanimity,  quite  lawfully  expressed  in 
throwing  money  away;  but  if  under  given  cir- 
cumstances he  can  only  do  it  by  throwing  the 
week's  food  away,  then  he  is  not  magnanimous, 
but  mean.  The  woman  ought  to  stand  for  a 
certain  wisdom  which  is  well  expressed  in  valu- 
349 


DUTY    OF    GUDGE 

ing  things  rightly  and  guarding  money  sensi- 
bly ;  but  how  is  she  to  guard  money  if  there  is 
no  money  to  guard?  The  child  ought  to  look 
on  his  mother  as  a  fountain  of  natural  fun  and 
poetry;  but  how  can  he  unless  the  fountain, 
like  other  fountains,  is  allowed  to  play?  What 
chance  have  any  of  these  ancient  arts  and  func- 
tions in  a  house  so  hideously  topsy-turvy;  a 
house  where  the  woman  is  out  working  and  the 
man  isn't ;  and  the  child  is  forced  by  law  to 
think  his  schoolmaster's  requirements  more  im- 
portant than  his  mother's?  No,  Gudge  and 
his  friends  in  the  House  of  Lords  and  the  Carl- 
ton  Club  must  make  up  their  minds  on  this 
matter,  and  that  very  quickly.  If  they  are 
content  to  have  England  turned  into  a  beehive 
and  an  ant-hill,  decorated  here  and  there  with 
a  few  faded  butterflies  playing  at  an  old  game 
called  domesticity  in  the  intervals  of  the  divorce 
court,  then  let  them  have  their  empire  of  in- 
sects ;  they  will  find  plenty  of  Socialists  who 
will  give  it  to  them.  But  if  they  want  a  do- 
mestic England,  they  must  "  shell  out,"  as  the 
346 


DUTY    OF    GUDGE 

phrase  goes,  to  a  vastly  greater  extent  than 
any  Radical  politician  has  yet  dared  to  sug- 
gest; they  must  endure  burdens  much  heavier 
than  the  Budget  and  strokes  much  deadlier  than 
the  death  duties;  for  the  thing  to  be  done  is 
nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  distribution  of 
the  great  fortunes  and  the  great  estates.  We 
can  now  only  avoid  Socialism  by  a  change  as 
vast  as  Socialism.  If  we  are  to  save  property 
we  must  distribute  property,  almost  as  sternly 
and  sweepingly  as  did  the  French  Revolution. 
If  we  are  to  preserve  the  family  we  must  revo- 
lutionize the  nation. 


347 


IV 

A    LAST    INSTANCE 

AND  now,  as  this  book  is  drawing  to  a  close,  I 
will  whisper  in  the  reader's  ear  a  horrible  suspi- 
cion that  has  sometimes  haunted  me:  the  suspi- 
cion that  Hudge  and  Gudge  are  secretly  in  part- 
nership. That  the  quarrel  they  keep  up  in 
public  is  very  much  of  a  put-up  job,  and  that 
the  way  in  which  they  perpetually  play  into 
each  other's  hands  is  not  an  everlasting  coin- 
cidence. Gudge,  the  plutocrat,  wants  an  an- 
archic industrialism ;  Hudge,  the  idealist,  pro- 
vides him  with  lyric  praises  of  anarchy.  Gudge 
wants  women-workers  because  they  are  cheaper ; 
Hudge  calls  the  woman's  work  "  freedom  to  live 
her  own  life."  Gudge  wants  steady  and  obedi- 
ent workmen ;  Hudge  preaches  teetotalism — to 
workmen,  not  to  Gudge.  Gudge  wants  a  tame 
and  timid  population  who  will  never  take  arms 
against  tyranny;  Hudge  proves  from  Tolstoi 
348 


A     LAST     INSTANCE 

that  nobody  must  take  arms  against  anything. 
Gudge  is  naturally  a  healthy  and  well-washed 
gentleman;  Hudge  earnestly  preaches  the  per- 
fection of  Gudge's  washing  to  people  who  can't 
practice  it.  Above  all,  Gudge  rules  by  a  coarse 
and  cruel  system  of  sacking  and  sweating  and 
bi-sexual  toil  which  is  totally  inconsistent  with 
the  free  family  and  which  is  bound  to  destroy 
it ;  therefore  Hudge,  stretching  out  his  arms  to 
the  universe  with  a  prophetic  smile,  tells  us  that 
the  family  is  something  that  we  shall  soon 
gloriously  outgrow. 

I  do  not  know  whether  the  partnership  of 
Hudge  and  Gudge  is  conscious  or  unconscious. 
I  only  know  that  between  them  they  still  keep 
the  common  man  homeless.  I  only  know  I  still 
meet  Jones  walking  the  streets  in  the  gray  twi- 
light, looking  sadly  at  the  poles  and  barriers 
and  low  red  goblin  lanterns  which  still  guard  the 
house  which  is  none  the  less  his  because  he  has 
never  been  in  it. 


349 


CONCLUSION 

HERE,  it  may  be  said,  my  book  ends  just  where 
it  ought  to  begin.  I  have  said  that  the  strong 
centers  of  modern  English  property  must  swiftly 
or  slowly  be  broken  up,  if  even  the  idea  of  prop- 
erty is  to  remain  among  Englishmen.  There 
are  two  ways  in  which  it  could  be  done,  a  cold 
administration  by  quite  detached  officials,  which 
is  called  Collectivism,  or  a  personal  distribution, 
so  as  to  produce  what  is  called  Peasant  Pro- 
prietorship. I  think  the  latter  solution  the  finer 
and  more  fully  human,  because  it  makes  each 
man  as  somebody  blamed  somebody  for  saying 
of  the  Pope,  a  sort  of  small  god.  A  man  on 
his  own  turf  tastes  eternity  or,  in  other  words, 
will  give  ten  minutes  more  work  than  is  required. 
But  I  believe  I  am  justified  in  shutting  the  door 
on  this  vista  of  argument,  instead  of  opening  it. 
For  this  book  is  not  designed  to  prove  the  case 
350 


CONCLUSION 

for  Peasant  Proprietorship,  but  to  prove  the 
case  against  modern  sages  who  turn  reform  to 
a  routine.  The  whole  of  this  book  has  been  a 
rambling  and  elaborate  urging  of  one  purely 
ethical  fact.  And  if  by  any  chance  it  should 
happen  that  there  are  still  some  who  do  not 
quite  see  what  that  point  is,  I  will  end  with  one 
plain  parable,  which  is  none  the  worse  for  being 
also  a  fact. 

A  little  while  ago  certain  doctors  and  other 
persons  permitted  by  modern  law  to  dictate  to 
their  shabbier  fellow-citizens,  sent  out  an  order 
that  all  little  girls  should  have  their  hair  cut 
short.  I  mean,  of  course,  all  little  girls  whose 
parents  were  poor.  Many  very  unhealthy  habits 
are  common  among  rich  little  girls,  but  it  will 
be  long  before  any  doctors  interfere  forcibly 
with  them.  Now,  the  case  for  this  particular 
interference  was  this,  that  the  poor  are  pressed 
down  from  above  into  such  stinking  and  suffo- 
cating underworlds  of  squalor,  that  poor  people 
must  not  be  allowed  to  have  hair,  because  in 
their  case  it  must  mean  lice  in  the  hair.  There- 
351 


CONCLUSION 

fore,  the  doctors  propose  to  abolish  the  hair.  It 
never  seems  to  have  occurred  to  them  to  abolish 
the  lice.  Yet  it  could  be  done.  As  is  common 
in  most  modern  discussions  the  unmentionable 
thing  is  the  pivot  of  the  whole  discussion.  It 
is  obvious  to  any  Christian  man  (that  is,  to  any 
man  with  a  free  soul)  that  any  coercion  applied 
to  a  cabman's  daughter  ought,  if  possible,  to 
be  applied  to  a  Cabinet  Minister's  daughter. 
I  will  not  ask  why  the  doctors  do  not,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  apply  their  rule  to  a  Cabinet 
Minister's  daughter.  I  will  not  ask,  because 
I  know.  They  do  not  because  they  dare 
not.  But  what  is  the  excuse  they  would  urge, 
what  is  the  plausible  argument  they  would  use, 
for  thus  cutting  and  clipping  poor  children 
and  not  rich?  Their  argument  would  be  that 
the  disease  is  more  likely  to  be  in  the  hair  of 
poor  people  than  of  rich.  And  why?  Because 
the  poor  children  are  forced  (against  all  the 
instincts  of  the  highly  domestic  working  classes) 
to  crowd  together  in  close  rooms  under  a  wildly 
inefficient  system  of  public  instruction ;  and  be- 
352 


CONCLUSION 

cause  in  one  out  of  the  forty  children  there  may 
be  offense.  And  why  ?  Because  the  poor  man  is 
so  ground  down  by  the  great  rents  of  the  great 
ground  landlords  that  his  wife  often  has  to 
work  as  well  as  he.  Therefore  she  has  no  time 
to  look  after  the  children  ;  therefore  one  in  forty 
of  them  is  dirty.  Because  the  workingman 
has  these  two  persons  on  top  of  him,  the  land- 
lord sitting  (literally)  on  his  stomach,  and  the 
schoolmaster  sitting  (literally)  on  his  head,  the 
workingman  must  allow  his  little  girl's  hair, 
first  to  be  neglected  from  poverty,  next  to  be 
poisoned  by  promiscuity,  and,  lastly,  to  be  abol- 
ished by  hygiene.  He,  perhaps,  was  proud  of 
his  little  girl's  hair.  But  he  does  not  count. 

Upon  this  simple  principle  (or  rather  prece- 
dent) the  sociological  doctor  drives  gayly  ahead. 
When  a  crapulous  tyranny  crushes  men  down 
into  the  dirt,  so  that  their  very  hair  is  dirty,  the 
scientific  course  is  clear.  It  would  be  long  and 
laborious  to  cut  off  the  heads  of  the  tyrants ; 
it  is  easier  to  cut  off  the  hair  of  the  slaves.  In 
the  same  way,  if  it  should  ever  happen  that 
353 


CONCLUSION 

poor  children,  screaming  with  toothache,  dis- 
turbed any  schoolmaster  or  artistic  gentleman, 
it  would  be  easy  to  pull  out  all  the  teeth  of  the 
poor ;  if  their  nails  were  disgustingly  dirty,  their 
nails  could  be  plucked  out ;  if  their  noses  were 
indecently  blown,  their  noses  could  be  cut  off. 
The  appearance  of  our  humbler  fellow-citizen 
could  be  quite  strikingly  simplified  before  we 
had  done  with  him.  But  all  this  is  not  a  bit 
wilder  than  the  brute  fact  that  a  doctor  can 
walk  into  the  house  of  a  free  man,  whose  daugh- 
ter's hair  may  be  as  clean  as  spring  flowers,  and 
order  him  to  cut  it  off.  It  never  seems  to  strike 
these  people  that  the  lesson  of  lice  in  the  slums 
is  the  wrongness  of  slums,  not  the  wrongness  of 
hair.  Hair  is,  to  say  the  least  of  it,  a  rooted 
thing.  Its  enemy  (like  the  other  insects  and 
oriental  armies  of  whom  we  have  spoken)  sweep 
upon  us  but  seldom.  In  truth,  it  is  only  by  eter- 
nal institutions  like  hair  that  we  can  test  passing 
institutions  like  empires.  If  a  house  is  so  built 
as  to  knock  a  man's  head  off  when  he  enters  it, 
it  is  built  wrong. 

354 


CONCLUSION 

The  mob  can  never  rebel  unless  it  is  conserva- 
tive, at  least  enough  to  have  conserved  some 
reasons  for  rebelling.  It  is  the  most  awful 
thought  in  all  our  anarchy,  that  most  of  the 
ancient  blows  struck  for  freedom  would  not  be 
struck  at  all  to-day,  because  of  the  obscuration 
of  the  clean,  popular  customs  from  which  they 
came.  The  insult  that  brought  down  the  ham- 
mer of  Wat  Tyler  might  now  be  called  a  medi- 
cal examination.  That  which  Virginius  loathed 
and  avenged  as  foul  slavery  might  now  be 
praised  as  free  love.  The  cruel  taunt  of  Foulon, 
"  Let  them  eat  grass,"  might  now  be  repre- 
sented as  the  dying  cry  of  an  idealistic  vegetar- 
ian. Those  great  scissors  of  science  that  would 
snip  off  the  curls  of  the  poor  little  school  chil- 
dren are  ceaselessly  snapping  closer  and  closer 
to  cut  off  all  the  corners  and  fringes  of  the  arts 
and  honors  of  the  poor.  Soon  they  will  be  twist- 
ing necks  to  suit  clean  collars,  and  hacking  feet 
to  fit  new  boots.  It  never  seems  to  strike  them 
that  the  body  is  more  than  raiment ;  that  the 
Sabbath  was  made  for  man  ;  that  all  institutions 
355 


CONCLUSION 

shall  be  judged  and  damned  by  whether  they 
have  fitted  the  normal  flesh  and  spirit.  It  is  the 
test  of  political  sanity  to  keep  your  head.  It 
is  the  test  of  artistic  sanity  to  keep  your 
hair  on. 

Now  the  whole  parable  and  purpose  of  these 
last  pages,  and  indeed  of  all  these  pages,  is  this : 
to  assert  that  we  must  instantly  begin  all  over 
again,  and  begin  at  the  other  end.  I  begin  with 
a  little  girl's  hair.  That  I  know  is  a  good  thing 
at  any  rate.  Whatever  else  is  evil,  the  pride  of 
a  good  mother  in  the  beauty  of  her  daughter  is 
good.  It  is  one  of  those  adamantine  tender- 
nesses which  are  the  touchstones  of  every  age 
and  race.  If  other  things  are  against  it,  other 
things  must  go  down.  If  landlords  and  laws  and 
sciences  are  against  it,  landlords  and  laws  and 
sciences  must  go  down.  With  the  red  hair  of 
one  she-urchin  in  the  gutter  I  will  set  fire  to  all 
modern  civilization.  Because  a  girl  should  have 
long  hair,  she  should  have  clean  hair;  because 
she  should  have  clean  hair,  she  should  not  have 
an  unclean  home;  because  she  should  not  have 
356 


CONCLUSION 

an  unclean  home,  she  should  have  a  free  and 
leisured  mother ;  because  she  should  have  a  free 
mother,  she  should  not  have  an  usurious  land- 
lord; because  there  should  not  be  an  usurious 
landlord,  there  should  be  a  redistribution  of 
property ;  because  there  should  be  a  redistribu- 
tion of  property,  there  shall  be  a  revolution. 
That  little  urchin  with  the  gold-red  hair,  whom 
I  have  just  watched  toddling  past  my  house, 
she  shall  not  be  lopped  and  lamed  and  altered; 
her  hair  shall  not  be  cut  short  like  a  convict's ; 
no,  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth  shall  be  hacked 
about  and  mutilated  to  suit  her.  She  is  the 
human  and  sacred  image ;  all  around  her  the 
social  fabric  shall  sway  and  split  and  fall;  the 
pillars  of  society  shall  be  shaken,  and  the  roofs 
of  ages  come  rushing  down;  and  not  one  hair 
of  her  head  shall  be  harmed. 


THREE   NOTES 


ON    FEMALE    SUFFRAGE 

NOT  wishing  to  overload  this  long  essay  with 
too  many  parentheses,  apart  from  its  thesis  of 
progress  and  precedent,  I  append  here  three 
notes  on  points  of  detail  that  may  possibly  be 
misunderstood. 

The  first  refers  to  the  female  controversy. 
It  may  seem  to  many  that  I  dismiss  too  curtly 
the  contention  that  all  women  should  have  votes, 
even  if  most  women  do  not  desire  them.  It  is 
constantly  said  in  this  connection  that  males 
have  received  the  vote  (the  agricultural  labor- 
ers for  instance)  when  only  a  minority  of  them 
were  in  favor  of  it.  Mr.  Galsworthy,  one  of 
the  few  fine  fighting  intellects  of  our  time,  has 
talked  this  language  in  the  "  Nation."  Now, 
broadly,  I  have  only  to  answer  here,  as  every- 
where in  this  book,  that  history  is  not  a  tobog- 
gan slide,  but  a  road  to  be  reconsidered  and 
even  retraced.  If  we  really  forced  General 
361 


362      ON     FEMALE     SUFFRAGE 

Elections  upon  free  laborers  who  definitely  dis- 
liked General  Elections,  then  it  was  a  thor- 
oughly undemocratic  thing  to  do;  if  we  are 
democrats  we  ought  to  undo  it.  We  want  the 
will  of  the  people,  not  the  votes  of  the  people ; 
and  to  give  a  man  a  vote  against  his  will  is 
to  make  voting  more  valuable  than  the  democ- 
racy it  declares. 

But  this  analogy  is  false,  for  a  plain  and 
particular  reason.  Many  voteless  women  re- 
gard a  vote  as  unwomanly.  Nobody  says  that 
most  voteless  men  regarded  a  vote  as  unmanly. 
Nobody  says  that  any  voteless  men  regarded 
it  as  unmanly.  Not  in  the  stillest  hamlet  or 
the  most  stagnant  fen  could  you  find  a  yokel 
or  a  tramp  who  thought  he  lost  his  sexual  dig- 
nity by  being  part  of  a  political  mob.  If  he 
did  not  care  about  a  vote  it  was  solely  because 
he  did  not  know  about  a  vote;  he  did  not  un- 
derstand the  word  any  better  than  Bimetallism. 
His  opposition,  if  it  existed,  was  merely  nega- 
tive. His  indifference  to  a  vote  was  really  in- 
difference. 

But  the  female  sentiment  against  the  fran- 


363 

chise,  whatever  its  size,  is  positive.  It  is  not 
negative;  it  is  by  no  means  indifferent.  Such 
women  as  are  opposed  to  the  change  regard  it 
(rightly  or  wrongly)  as  unfeminine.  That  is, 
as  insulting  certain  affirmative  traditions  to 
which  they  are  attached.  You  may  think  such 
a  view  prejudiced;  but  I  violently  deny  that 
any  democrat  has  a  right  to  override  such  prej- 
udices, if  they  are  popular  and  positive.  Thus 
he  would  not  have  a  right  to  make  millions  of 
Moslems  vote  with  a  cross  if  they  had  a  preju- 
dice in  favor  of  voting  with  a  crescent.  Unless 
this  is  admitted,  democracy  is  a  farce  we  need 
scarcely  keep  up.  If  it  is  admitted,  the  Suf- 
fragists have  not  merely  to  awaken  an  indif- 
ferent, but  to  convert  a  hostile  majority. 


n 

ON  CLEANLINESS  IN  EDUCATION 

ON  re-reading  my  protest,  which  I  honestly 
think  much  needed,  against  our  heathen  idola- 
try of  mere  ablution,  I  see  that  it  may  possibly 
be  misread.  I  hasten  to  say  that  I  think  wash- 
ing a  most  important  thing  to  be  taught  both 
to  rich  and  poor.  I  do  not  attack  the  posi- 
tive but  the  relative  position  of  soap.  Let  it 
be  insisted  on  even  as  much  as  now;  but  let 
other  things  be  insisted  on  much  more.  I  am 
even  ready  to  admit  that  cleanliness  is  next  to 
godliness ;  but  the  moderns  will  not  even  admit 
godliness  to  be  next  to  cleanliness.  In  their 
talk  about  Thomas  Becket  and  such  saints  and 
heroes  they  make  soap  more  important  than 
soul;  they  reject  godliness  whenever  it  is  not 
cleanliness.  If  we  resent  this  about  remote 
saints  and  heroes,  we  should  resent  it  more 
about  the  many  saints  and  heroes  of  the 

364 


EDUCATION  365 

slums,  whose  unclean  hands  cleanse  the 
world.  Dirt  is  evil  chiefly  as  evidence 
of  sloth ;  but  the  fact  remains  that  the 
classes  that  wash  most  are  those  that  work 
least.  Concerning  these,  the  practical  course 
is  simple;  soap  should  be  urged  on  them  and 
advertised  as  what  it  is — a  luxury.  With  re- 
gard to  the  poor  also  the  practical  course  is 
not  hard  to  harmonize  with  our  thesis.  If  we 
want  to  give  poor  people  soap  we  must  set  out 
deliberately  to  give  them  luxuries.  If  we  will 
not  make  them  rich  enough  to  be  clean,  then 
emphatically  we  must  do  what  we  did  with  the 
saints.  We  must  reverence  them  for  being 
dirty. 


m 

ON    PEASANT    PROPRIETORSHIP 

I  HAVE  not  dealt  with  any  details  touching  dis- 
tributed ownership,  or  its  possibility  in  Eng- 
land, for  the  reason  stated  in  the  text.  This 
book  deals  with  what  is  wrong,  wrong  in  our 
root  of  argument  and  effort.  This  wrong  is,  I 
say,  that  we  will  go  forward  because  we  dare 
not  go  back.  Thus  the  Socialist  says  that 
property  is  already  concentrated  into  Trusts 
and  Stores :  the  only  hope  is  to  concentrate  it 
further  in  the  State.  I  say  the  only  hope  is 
to  unconcentrate  it;  that  is,  to  repent  and  re- 
turn ;  the  only  step  forward  is  the  step  back- 
ward. 

But  in  connection  with  this  distribution  I 
have  laid  myself  open  to  another  potential  mis- 
take. In  speaking  of  a  sweeping  redistribu- 
tion, I  speak  of  decision  in  the  aim,  not  neces- 
sarily of  abruptness  in  the  means.  It  is  not 
at  all  too  late  to  restore  an  approximately  ra- 

366 


PROPRIETORSHIP         367 

tional  state  of  English  possessions  without  any 
mere  confiscation.  A  policy  of  buying  out 
landlordism,  steadily  adopted  in  England  as  it 
has  already  been  adopted  in  Ireland  (notably 
in  Mr.  Wyndham's  wise  and  fruitful  Act), 
would  in  a  very  short  time  release  the  lower 
end  of  the  see-saw  and  make  the  whole  plank 
swing  more  level.  The  objection  to  this  course 
is  not  at  all  that  it  would  not  do,  only  that  it 
will  not  be  done.  If  we  leave  things  as  they 
are,  there  will  almost  certainly  be  a  crash  of 
confiscation.  If  we  hesitate,  we  shall  soon  have 
to  hurry.  But  if  we  start  doing  it  quickly  we 
have  still  time  to  do  it  slowly. 

This  point,  however,  is  not  essential  to  my 
book.  All  I  have  to  urge  between  these  two 
boards  is  that  I  dislike  the  big  Whiteley  shop, 
and  that  I  dislike  Socialism  because  it  will  (ac- 
cording to  Socialists)  be  so  like  that  shop.  It 
is  its  fulfilment,  not  its  reversal.  I  do  not  ob- 
ject to  Socialism  because  it  will  revolutionize 
our  commerce,  but  because  it  will  leave  it  so 
horribly  the  same. 


•HN389  C44  1918 
Chesterton,  G.  K.  1874-1936. 

What's  wrong  with  the  world 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A    001  347  459    8 


